“In Time” was not quite true to the title. Drawn out and low in substance, the latest from Andrew Niccol, lacked tension, but had a very interesting premise. Though the plot was far-fetched, it created an insightful mirror for our society, which isn’t surprising seeing as Niccol’s other films including the also disguisedly pensive “The Truman Show”. The slow tempo made the film so much longer than it needed to be.
The film starts out with a flimsy explanation of how time became currency and for being what the entire film’s plot is based; it doesn’t really create a solid foundation for the plot of the movie. Will Salas, played by Justin Timberlake (who is unfortunately not as good of an actor as he is a singer) is your everyman, making just barely enough to scrape by. When Will comes into some time from a random wealthy man who has lost the will to live after a century, he crosses from the ghetto into the classier side of town (New Greenwich). This introduces us to the pampered daddy’s girl seeking adventure, Sylvia Weis (played by Amanda Seyfried) and they go on a wild romp, trying to bring some sort of fairness to their top-heavy society where the rich can live forever but the poor live day to day (literally). One of the things I thought the film did well was use contrasting colors to offset the two different worlds- the ghetto and the rich neighborhood. The ghetto had some color, but was mostly grayscale. The rich and wealthy scenes had very stark and edgy colors. Another cool aspect of the film was the watches that everyone had on their arms. When a person in this dystopian future turned twenty-five, their clock started, counting down one year. If they just let it run, they would “time out” when the clock hit zero. Things are paid for in minutes and hours and transfers of time-money are made by locking arms… it got weird, let’s leave it at that. The green clocks were a constant reminder of the status of the character but the constant cuts to people’s arms got annoying after a while. I kept thinking, We get it, they are running out of time! Unfortunately, the ticking arm-clocks were not enough to drive the pace of the film. It seriously lagged in the parts between the sparse dialogue. There was a cool speech given by a Time Keeper (a policeman), however, about how corrupt their society is.
The way in which their society mimics and exaggerates ours resonates deeply, especially with the Occupy Wall Street protests with their “We are the 99%” chants. The line repeated several times that harkens back to that is “For few to be immortal, many must die”. This attitude is much like the one shared by America’s wealthy and Niccol is trying to get this audience to see this. I think this movie’s release date worked very well for it.
2 1/2 out of 5 minutes
