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Movie Review: In Time

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With ‘In Time’ it seems the makers, very pleased with their novel idea (more of which to follow), then felt exempt from showing any concern for making an engaging, logical or thoughtful thriller. They should know that a good idea offers no absolution from the need to construct a good movie, it in fact heightens expectations. Here a lot of energy is expelled working on clever puns around the movies central premise and not a lot else is achieved. Our story is set in a world where a body clock kicks-in for everybody in and around your 25th birthday and from there on in you work to earn time, accruing minutes to keep you alive. This world, like most, is an injust one, where some have access to all the time in the world while others are worked to the bone to have enough time to rest and get back to work. The poor don’t waste much time sleeping. So here lies the first of our play on words – ‘time is money’ given literal meaning with everything from a cup of coffee to the bus journey home costing you precious minutes. The movie continues to play with common vernacular sayings (‘give me a minute’) and everyday activities (‘keeping time’) being turned on their heads in this reality. All that ran through this reviewers minds is that Horatio Cane would have a field day coming up with punchy one-liners should he be transferred from Miami to police time keeping offences in this world. ‘Your clock’s been punched, Mr. Criminal’.

The idea has potential, the unimaginative take on it just does not ring through though. The story is as formulaic as they come – guy from wrong side of the tracks (Justin Timberlake), framed for a crime he didn’t commit, rebellious poor-little rich girl (Amanda Seyfried), thrown together by faith to try to undo the flaws with the system around them. The sorry predictability continues and quenches any spark of the seed idea. Both the main characters are stock leads, Timberlake plays Will; there are suggestions as to where his motivations come from but never any explanation as to how he can fight like a professional or drive like a stunt man (in his poor surrounds everyone travels by foot or public transport), and with Seyfried for some reason, her insulated lifestyle has lead her to become the most insightful of all her community, despite their being people hundreds of years old around here. To their credit, Timerberlake and Seyfried do work well together and have some cute moments but the whole thing seems like a clinical game of dress-up with Seyfried escaping bank raids in stilletos and never a drop of blood spilled.

This lazy characterisation is symptomatic of everything being set up to tell a join-the-dots story. One sequence involved a length journey, costing up to a years worth of time, to the right side of the tracks, i.e., between time zones (naturally) to New Greenwich, a seeming utopia of material wealth and long lives to toast to. Later in the film it seems it takes no more than a 3 minute highway journey to make the same journey back and so two only one police force guards both time zones and can flit between locations in mere minutes. These are not discrepancies that may occur to an eagle-eyed viewer, they are glaring and show thoughtlessness. In a movie that takes itself so seriously, and seems to pride itself on its tackling of a big idea and the existential questions that flow from it, the reality is though it is as shallow a soup bowl. The earnest cop (Cillian Murphy) has huge potential to be a great conflicted character but is ultimately flip-flopped around to suit the needs of a scene while the villain of the piece (a lukewarm representation of the corruption at play rather than anyone with any menace – Mad Men’s Vincent Kartheiser) is driven by Darwin’s thesis on the survival of the fittest, a phrase never once uttered or written by Darwin.  This is no intelligent fusion of pop culture fused with fearful scenarios, this is poor man’s sci-fi that will, in time (oblige me), end up in a bargain box.


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