Alright, I’ll be completely honest. I went to go see this movie for one reason, and one reason only. That reason is that I find Cillian Murphy to be an extremely talented actor, and leap at every chance I get to see him on big-screen. So in going to see the new movie “In Time”, the desire to stare adoringly at Cillian Murphy’s face was fulfilled. However, I also go the theater with the desire to see a good movie, a movie that I will enjoy. And unfortunately, “In Time” didn’t quite manage to fulfill that second wish.
(Spoilers for the movie below)
“In Time” is set somewhere in the near future, where time has replaced money as the currency, and people are genetically modified to stop aging (at least physically) once they reach the age of 25. This is thanks to gene splicing and a handy-dandy, glow-in-the-dark wristwatch built right into a person’s arm. After turning 25, you must either earn more time or die within a year. Time can be earned the same ways that money can; through working a job, stealing, or participating in illegal activities such as prostitution.
However, the amount of time that you earn doesn’t necessarily dictate how long you will live. Since time has replaced money, things such as food, transportation and even the rent for your apartment building all cost time. So not only are you trying to earn more money so that you can live longer, but also to pay for the groceries. In essence, time is the new money, if money could make you live forever.
The plot of “In Time” is fairly standard for science fiction movies these days. “In Time” start off with a day on the life of Will Salas (Justin Timberlake), a young man from the ghetto. Will, like everyone else, is living day to day, trying to earn enough money to both keep him alive and pay the rent on the house that he shares with his fifty year old mother (Olivia Wilde). A series of seemingly normal events end with Will meeting 105-year-old Henry Hamilton (Matt Bomer), a rich man with more than a century of time left to spend on his clock. After Will saves Henry from the local gang, known as Minute Men, Henry decides to give Will all his time.
The reason for this decision is unclear. Henry does mention that he is tired of living, and Will’s answer to the question “What would you do if you had this much time” are eluded to being contributing factors of Henry’s ‘suicide’. However, the whole thing is skimmed over much too quickly for us to really understand why Henry deems Will worthy of more than 100 years of time. Henry times out (the new way of dying) atop a bridge. The whole thing is filmed by a security camera and Will, who arrived only to see Henry’s body plummet into water below, flees, realizing that the scene does not cast him in a favorable light.
At first, it appears as if Will has no big plans for his new-found wealth, and merely considers himself lucky to have been at the right place at the right time. However, after his mother times out in his arms, Will decides that he is going to exact revenge on the rich (and to some extent, the system) for doing this to her.
How exactly he plans to do this is unclear, but the plan begins with Will travelling to New Greenwich, the town of the wealthy. Once there, Will meets Phillipe Weis (Vincent Kartheiser), a 900 year old millionaire, acquires roughly one thousand years from him in a poker game, meets Phillipe’s daughter Silvia (Amanda Seyfried), and gets invited to a party at the Weis’s mansion. The party – which is nothing more than a scene excuse for Will and Silvia to get to know each other better, flirt, dance, talk money, (or rather time) and go skinny dipping in the ocean, ends with Timekeeper Raymond Leon (Cillian Murphy) arriving to arrest Will. However, he escapes a future in prison by being smarter and stronger than the police, as well as taking Silvia hostage (spoiler alert! They fall in love, although if you want to be particularly cynical, you could say Silvia is suffering from nothing more than Stockholm syndrome).
After that, the movie becomes both rather confusing (not to mention vaguely socialist flavored) what with all the chase scenes, bank robbing, speeches about ‘distributing the wealth equally’ and ‘taking down the corrupt system’, and trying to piece together the stilted dialogue so that there is some continuity in what the characters are saying.
That said, “In Time” is not a bad movie, merely a weak one, because it has a compelling plot and interesting ideas that just needed to be better thought out. The only reason these ideas weren’t thought out was because the directors were too busy focusing the camera on Amanda Seyfried’s pretty face.
Now, you can say what you want about Justin Timberlake’s music, but he has proven himself to be a decent actor (Although he may be better suited to movies like “Friends With Benefits”). His character, Will Salas, is no one important, has no special powers or abilities, and just got lucky thanks to events that were outside of his control. Timberlake does a good job of portraying an ordinary guy swept up in something he doesn’t really understand, but will try to fight anyway. And while Amanda Seyfried’s character does seem to do nothing in the beginning but blink her overly-large eyes and look eerily like a Bratz Doll, she does have her kick-ass moments and by the end has developed the start of a personality.
Unfortunately, Cillian Murphy’s character is nothing special; he’s supposed to be aloof and uncaring, but instead comes off as bland and emotionless. His death is also much too convenient, and leaves you feeling as if something is missing from that particular scene.
My advice? Go see “In Time”, because it’s a fun movie, but don’t go in expecting that you are going to have to think while watching it (This isn’t Inception, after all). Also try to avoid thinking about the plot holes and problems the ending presents as the credits roll. Instead, nod and smile, and try not to think about how impossible it would be for Olivia Wilde to sprint in five-inch heels.
