A Timely Movie

When I first saw the trailer for In Time in front of another movie, I wasn't enthusiastic to see it. It looked like Logan's Run meets action film, a brainless bit of fluff masquerading as something that had at least a little bit of brain. I made no plans to see it.

Then I found out that In Time was written and directed by Andrew Niccol, the writer and director of one of my very favorite movies, Gattaca. I changed my tune immediately. Surely this was just a case of a movie studio cutting a bad trailer, trying to present an intelligent science fiction allegory as a bit of shoot-'em'-up fluff they figured would appeal to the masses.

Sometimes, what you see is what you get.

In Time posits a world (which Harlan Ellison claims was his idea first) in which aging stops at 25 -- at which point every person on Earth has exactly one more year to live before they drop dead on the spot. Time has become the new currency; you sell minutes off your remaining year to buy goods, and work to get minutes put back on your clock. Society has stratified into a strict class culture, where the poor struggle to hang on to life as the rich live almost literally forever.

It all sounds like an interesting jumping off point for some social commentary, doesn't it? And with so-called "class warfare" being a hot political issue these days, surely the man who wrote Gattaca has some provocative things to say on the matter.

Or maybe he just wants to make a sci-fi Bonnie and Clyde. Despite the intriguing set-up, In Time quickly devolves into a running, jumping, chasing, shooting action flick. And a mindless one at that. One character after the next engages in behavior that makes absolutely no sense, given the circumstances. Good guys triumph not through their own ingenuity, but through dumb luck, and stupidity on the part of the villains.

The movie wasn't a total loss, as some of the action was at least interesting, as action for action's sake goes. Also, Justin Timberlake is likeable enough in the starring role. (Anyone who might question his acting chops clearly hasn't seen The Social Network or Alpha Dog.) The rest of the cast falls short, though. Amanda Seyfried is a personality free love interest; Cillian Murphy is surprisingly dull as the investigator pursuing the hero; Vincent Kartheiser is just a cartoonishly more weaselly version of his Mad Men character; Matt Bomer is unable to convey his character's motivations in his limited screen time (and the script does him no favors); Johnny Galecki is supposed to be 25 years old? (Yeah, right.)

I'm shocked to find that I'd ever be recommending a Michael Bay movie, but if you're looking for a shallow sci-fi chase film, The Island delivered better thrills. In Time, I rate an average C.