Film Review | In Time

Who has time, these days? It’s become our most common excuse to avoid any lasting commitments… some of which could even be very beneficial to us in the long run. We’re too busy to join a gym, too busy to read a book – too busy, even, to pursue a committed relationship. Never mind that we spend endless hours stalking friends and acquaintances on Facebook, and zapping to E! Entertainment the second real life gets just a little too dull to handle. The easy availability of entertainment, thanks to the internet, ensures that we’re kept busy – even when we’re not at work or working – and it’s a lure that’s very difficult to resist.

Science fiction is at its best when it takes topical issues and plunges them into the future, squeezing out all their shocking implications. In Time, Andrew Niccol’s high-concept blockbuster, aims to do just that. Our attractive leads (Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried) rail against a world in which time has become the main currency – literally.

People are born with an – admittedly snazzy-looking – timer flashing on their forearm, which records the amount of hours, minutes and seconds you have left – and if you ‘time out’, you die. The upshot of all this is that people never really show their age, but the price for this concession to progress is that the gap between the time-rich and the time-poor is vast… and the implications of not having enough time at hand – the puns are inevitable so please bear with me – are far more terrifying than not having enough cash.

Will Salas (Timberlake) is one such member of the temporal have-nots, living in a council squat in the ghetto with his mother (Olivia Wilde, who is older than the former crooner in real life). Hoping to nab some extra time to get her out of the ghetto while eking out a meagre existence in a factory job, Will rescues a millionaire stranger Henry Hamilton (Matt Bomer) after The Minutemen, a group of gangsters led by Fortis (Alex Pettyfer) try to rob him of his exorbitant number of years (a century).

Rewarding our hero with some extra time, Hamilton commits suicide the following day. This spirals Will into a series of unfortunate events, which sees him hooking up with risk-taking socialite Sylvia Weis (Seyfried) as he goes head-to-head against her billionaire father Philippe (Mad Men’s Vincent Kartheiser)… all the while being pursued by ‘Timekeeper’ Raymond Leon (Cillian Murphy), who might know more about Will’s past than Will himself.

I’m a champion of intelligent science fiction – it shows people that the genre doesn’t just have to be all about rockets and rayguns and can actually tell an engaging story that capitalises on some of our most deep-set fears about the future. In Time has this in spades, even though what’s most commendable about it is arguably stolen –claiming plagiarism and threatening a lawsuit, author Harlan Ellison accused the filmmakers of using the basis of his story “Repent, Harlequin!” Said the Ticktockman for the film, and he was only silenced when it was agreed that his name will be included in the credits.

But at the end of the day a story soars or falls on the strength of how its told, and Niccol having mined the genre to unravel some interesting gems in the past – Gattaca, for example – fails to enliven the premise and instead, shamelessly relies on the sleek visuals and sleeker starts to keep things chugging along.

Needless to say, this results in a frightfully dull picture, despite the many car chases thrown in there to keep us attentive and awake. There also seems to be an overestimation of Justin Timberlake’s acting ability. His turn as louche Napster founder in The Social Network worked but he lacks the necessary flintiness to play the downtrodden hero right… and a scene early on, in which he’s required to squeeze out some grief, shows him up to be lacking in the dramatic department.

Seyfried looks stunning but, just like the film’s deliberately sleek surroundings, she is also deliberately cold – an understandable aesthetic decision, but there’s not much else to compensate for the lack of any real charm or chemistry between the two leads.

It will pass the time, but you might end up wondering whether it was worth the investment.