Time is money - no really
In Time - starring Justin Timberlake, portrays a world where your money really is your life
After Christopher Nolan's metaphysical mind-bender Inception made $825,000,000 at the box office, Hollywood seems to have realised that action flicks needn't be depressingly meat-headed in order to make money. Indeed, Nolan was able to demonstrate that an idea, a good idea, can sustain big-budget cinema just as well as pyrotechnic special effects.
And it is in this climate that In Time appears to have negotiated the torturous commissioning process to reach our screens. Its central premise is surprisingly simple, perhaps best summed up in the well-known expression ‘time is money'. In essence, In Time depicts a near-future USA in which the length of one's life has replaced the dollar as the principal currency. After the age of 25, individuals find their life-clock running down in a fashion vaguely reminiscent of Logan's Run. They can add to their clock (ie defer death) by ‘earning' time through work, but must sacrifice time in exchange for the necessities of life: food, rent, and, in one scene the morning cup of coffee.
But all is not well with this system of chronological capitalism. The cost of living rises with suspicious regularity, and the majority of the population finds itself surviving, quite literally, from day to day. Meanwhile a tiny elite are able to amass vast ‘fortunes' of time for themselves, effectively achieving immortality. Into this futuristic serfdom steps Will Salas (Justin Timberlake), a latter-day Robin Hood (complete with stubble and crew-cut) intent upon rescuing the masses from the penury to which they have been subjected.
Sadly, it is at this point that the film begins to flag. Timberlake, although not exactly a bad actor, is unable to maintain the necessary Marxist indignation needed to make his role credible. The situation isn't helped by a screenplay that requires some quite startling emotional gear changes. Relatively early in the film, Will Salas' mother dies (‘times out') in a tragic ‘almost made it' scene. Timberlake does a bit of regulation keening and wailing, but within 20 minutes can be found skinny dipping with the lissome love interest played by Amanda Siegfried. It all makes for a rather disingenuous narrative, and suggests to me that the director Andrew Nicoll lavished so much attention upon the mechanics of his central concept that he rather lost sight of how believable human characters might operate within it.
The problem is exacerbated by a script that cannot resist indulging in a few terrible chronogical puns. In one scene, for example, Timberlake's character breaks into a vault containing an eon of potential time, prompting the cringe-worthy one liner, ‘now that's what I call quality time'. It rather detracts from the sincerity of the piece and, surprisingly for the writer of The Truman Show, robs the movie of some of its humanity.
But still, there is much here to praise. The central premise is engaging and provocative, and there is some decent (if under-used) support from Cillian Murphy as the main anatagonist and defender of the status quo. It is just a shame that these promising elements never quite come together to form a satisfactory whole. Intriguing, but profoundly flawed.
Rating: PP***
N2 film reviews – supported by Newbury Vue*
