Guest Review: In Time (2011)

By tryanmax

I am stunned to think that this movie came from the same mind as Gattica. I had mixed expectations when I sat down to watch. The premise—time has literally become money and if you run out, you die—sounded a little clunky to me. But I figured that maybe Andrew Niccol could pull it off. Besides, dystopian sci-fi is my favorite genre and I figured, if nothing else, I could expect some fast pacing, cool, futuristic visuals, and some clever one-liners.

** spoiler alert **

Never underestimate Hollywood’s ability to let you down.

Synopsis (Note: the names have been omitted because I don’t care.)

Scruffy Poor Guy (Justin Timberlake) lives in a future where humans have been genetically engineered to stop aging at 25. If they want to live longer, they must earn more time. Time is currency; one can earn it or spend it. To keep track of time, everyone has a timer embedded in their forearm. If it reaches zero, you die instantly. A side effect of the engineering is that everyone’s speech is riddled with wordplay about time.

In the ghetto, people live paycheck to paycheck. (ha!) So when a Stranger comes to town with a century on his clock, it attracts the attention of a gang of time thieves called the Minutemen. (ha!) Scruffy rescues him and in return the Stranger gives him his time (ha!), effectively committing suicide—but not before letting Scruffy in on the “vast conspiracy.” For the first time in his life, Scruffy has time on his hands (ha!), but the Timekeepers (a.k.a. cops, ha!) think he murdered the Stranger and the gang is now after him, too. Scruffy decides to skip town with his Hot Mom and go live the high-life. Before he can reach her, however, she runs out of time. (ha!) Now Scruffy is out for revenge and he plans to take it from, who else?, some rich dude he’s never met before.

Flawed Concept

One of the challenges facing any dystopian narrative is that, more so than other genres, it relies heavily on a gimmick. As far as that goes, the one here isn’t all that bad. The trouble is that this can lead to a weak script if the gimmick is made to carry too much. That is precisely the problem with In Time.

Most dystopian tales deal with the individual against a repressive society, but the “time is money” concept more easily pits the haves against the have-nots. This film dabbles with both as well as third concept involving the desirability of immortality, which might have paid off immensely if it weren’t so quickly abandoned. After a bit of waffling, the film finally takes off on a social justice screed that is itself a gimmick.

It is apparent that no real thought was given to how a society such as this one might actually work. For starters, in the film funds can be transferred—or stolen—with a simple handshake, so the fact that this society hasn’t crumpled into total anarchy is something of a miracle. Besides, given the life-or-death consequences of poor money management, one should expect the average person to have the financial acumen of a mutual fund manager. Plus, there is no logic that dictates only the affluent can live past 100 while the poor must die much younger.

It’s also impossible to get a sense of value within the movie. Prices seem assigned based on the needs of the plot rather than comparative worth. A point is made of shocking the audience early with the idea that a cup of coffee takes four minutes off of your life. But a “decent lunch” costs about 30 minutes while a five-mile bus ride costs two hours and a typical loan payment is two days. Things get even more out of whack when the action moves from the poorer “Time Zones” (ha!) to the more affluent ones. Suddenly, things move from being priced in minutes and hours to being valued in months and years. This is supposed to illustrate the grave disparity between rich and poor, but when a century makes one astonishingly rich, even the well-to-do can barely be making ends meet. Maybe I’m obsessing over the details. Or maybe it’s just lazy writing.

Heavy Handed Liberalism

This may not be the worst movie I’ve ever seen, but it is definitely vying for the most blatantly liberal. From the annoying electric whine of all the cars to the token black guy who “gets it” when no one else does, this film practically has an “Obama/Biden” sticker on the back.

The film is so chock full of tirades, I can’t recall a scene without one. Several times, Scruffy broadly labels the rich as thieves. Sheltered Rich Girl (Amanda Seyfried) laments her privileged station a few times. Evil Rich Guy (Vincent Kartheiser) delivers a canned speech about Darwinian capitalism and the next stage of evolution—you know? the one that comes after conquering disease, age and death. Timekeeper (Cillian Murphy) laments that Scruffy is hurting the very people he means to help because that sounds like something a cruel conservative might say.

And remember the “vast conspiracy” I mentioned earlier? Here it is: the rich live in luxury while the poor struggle to survive even though there’s plenty to go around! This is what liberals pat themselves on the back for sorting out? The only thing more juvenile is the plan Scruffy and Rich Girl hatch to bring “the system” down: steal lots of money and if that doesn’t work, steal more money. I hate to say it, but a plot like that makes “unobtanium” seem like pure genius.

Nothing else is good, either!

At the beginning I said I was hoping at least for a quick film with eye-candy and witty dialogue. This isn’t even that. At only 100 minutes, In Time feels interminable, and endless chase scenes aren’t to blame. Rather it belongs to a repetitive stream of leftist pontifications. The art direction seems to have been lifted from Gattaca minus several bucks, so the only eye-candy takes the form of the entirely twenty-something cast. Somebody must’ve told Niccol that a good script has a twist at the end, because there is one thrown in that contributes nothing to the story and isn’t all that surprising anyway. And the dialogue, well, I don’t need to waste your time. (ha!)