Originally published in Cinema Knife Fight, October 31,
2011
IN TIME (2011) is an interesting, if not
completely well-executed, science fiction story from Andrew Niccol,
writer/director of one of my favorite sci-fi films, GATTACA (1997),
and writer of another favorite: THE TRUMAN SHOW (1998). Niccol
spins an interesting story in most everything he does but… well, though I found
the premise of IN TIME very cool, and it was well-acted for
the most part, it was no GATTACA.
Here’s the poop for you folks who never read the entire
review: the movie felt too long. Though it clocked in at under two hours, and
I’ve watched all twelve hours of the LORD OF THE RINGS (2005+)
trilogy without blinking (granted, no-blinking is one of my movie-watching
quirks, but here I’m being metaphorical), so being long is
not a problem, having a film feel too long, well,
that’s not a good thing.
The movie is broken into three interesting blocks of plot,
any two of which could have been culled out of the script and the third
expounded upon to make a great, in-depth science fiction film. Smooshed
together as they were into one flick, it was a lot of stuff to watch on the
screen without ever getting too interested in any one aspect. Each “chapter,”
as we’ll call them, was almost-interesting.
In the future (I guess it’s the future – doesn’t really say
and the only way you can really tell is that the cars are electric – but more
on them in a second – let’s just say it’s a What If world),
we’ve tapped into the aging genes of humans so when anyone turns twenty-five
years old, they stop aging. Yikes, you say, won’t
that cause overpopulation? No, because we are born with a bio-electric
timer shining from our left arm, reading 0001:00:00:0:00:00—one
year. When you hit twenty-five, you stop aging and the clock starts ticking.0000:11:30:6:23:59 and
so on. Months, days, hours… and when it hits zero, you die, but death is staved
off as long as you work, or your spouse or friend or parents work, and earns
more time. No money in this world, only time: the most
precious commodity in this world because once you run out of it—system
shutdown. No restarts. (Though a sequel could always be done: IN TIME
2: ZOMBIE RESTART.. hmmm).
One plot point which is key to the entire film: you
can exchange hours. A small girl walks up to someone in
the street and says, “Got a minute, sir?” She’s not looking to talk, but
begging for a spare minute. If you own too many days or years on your arm and
find yourself in a tough part of town, someone can jump you and steal all of them,
draining your life from you. This time exchange is clever. How they
actually do it is silly, but I can’t think of a better
way without everyone walking around with a bio-reader on their belt.
Justin Timberlake (BAD TEACHER, 2011, THE
SOCIAL NETWORK, 2010,‘N SYNC: IN THE MIX Documentary,
2001) plays Will Silas, twenty-eight years old and hasn’t aged a day in three
years. Will lives with his mother, Rachel (Olivia Wilde – COWBOYS &
ALIENS, 2011, HOUSE M.D., 2007-2011), who still looks
twenty-five, though plans to celebrate her fortieth birthday when the film
opens. At first I thought it odd that a twenty-eight year old still lives with
his mother, but people have little time for much else than work in their
neighborhood, known as a district. Prices are inflated
unexpectedly by some unseen governmental agency (unseen by the residents, at
least). A cup of coffee costs 4 hours (you pay in hours, days, etc). Bus fare
has jumped from 1 to 2 hours (yes, I’ve stopped spelling out the numbers in
this review, taking a break from Strunk & White for now). People live
hand-to-mouth (or arm to mouth since their arms are always displaying the
remaining hours of their lives).
I found this world fascinating. Will and his mom trade a few
hours so one of them can make it to work and back without dropping dead. Will’s
job has increased his quota so when he gets paid it’s only a pittance. Suppression
of the masses is the obvious goal here, and the picture being
painted by the filmmakers. I would think that these ghettos would be boiling
pots of angst, with riots being common occurrences, but they aren’t. Everyone
is docile and seems resigned to their fate of scraping enough time together to
live another day. Not sure how accurately this would play out in the real
world.
One cool behavior of the poor folks in this district is the
constant, repetitive act of checking their arms to gauge how much time they
have left. Always aware, and wary, of the clock. At one point, Will says, “In
this neighborhood, you learn not to sleep in.”
Quick shout out to Johnny Galecki (THE BIG BANG THEORY,
2007-Present,ROSANNE, 1992-1997) as Will’s frumpy best friend,
struggling to support his wife and new baby. His story is brief but the few
scenes he plays in are powerful, and I would have liked to see him more.
Galecki has a good screen presence.
When Will encounters a stinking rich guy played by Matt
Bomer (Bryce Larkin from CHUCK, 2007-2009, THE GUIDING
LIGHT 2001-2003) flaunting 115 years shining from his arm, he saves
the stranger from a marauding gang which terrorizes the district and wants to
take the century of life for themselves. This rich guy, Henry Hamilton,
explains that he’s lived over a hundred years and people shouldn’t live this
long. He wants out, and gives all of his time to Will while he sleeps except
for 5 minutes, enough time to wander out to a bridge and die to his own terms.
“For a few to live forever, many more must die,” he tells
Will. This line is repeated later and is the crux of the story, of the world
they live in.
The next “chapter” comes when Will, after trying to use his
money to help his best friend, mother and a charity mission on the corner, but
mostly failing, decides to see how the other, richer half live in order to find
a way to fix the problems in his district, to stop the insanity, and to avenge
those who have died needlessly.
This world is also interesting, in a snobby, boring kind of
way. Centered in the downtown of a nameless city, it is populated exclusively
by black and grey-clad rich people with centuries glowing from their arms. They
have an almost unlimited supply time. There are people who “come from time”
(instead of coming from money), but time is also squeezed from the poorer
masses. There is no middle class, you are either poor and on the edge of death,
or are virtually immortal. If there is a middle class, it is the police force,
called Timekeepers, which enforces the “balance” of time-ownership amid the
lower class, investigating when one person’s supply spikes suddenly. In effect,
they enforce the upper class requirement that the poor stay poor and the rich
become richer.
Oh, let’s mention the cars again. I said above that the only
sign this was a “future” world were the cars. The rich and the timekeepers all
drive cars. Slowly, lest someone bumps into something and gets hurt. The cars
are electric because they whine, no motor noises. And the doors close with a
hissing “fwoop!” This is a real nit-picky thing, but this is a sci-fi movie,
and us fan-boys always nit-pick details. Everyone has by now seen at least one
Hybrid and/or electric car. They don’t make noise. A Prius could sneak up
behind you and the only sound to give it away are the tires rolling over
pebbles. They don’t whine, at least not like these cars. And, there’s no need
for doors to hermetically seal themselves. If there was, make all the doors do
that in the film, not just every now and then when the sound effects person
remembers to. OK, I’ve given voice to my geekie-ness. Back to the film review.
One of the big shots in this world is Philippe Weis, a
flush-faced, quietly sinister man, well-played by Vincent Kartheiser (MAD
MEN, 2007 -Present). He owns most of the banks and controls many of the
prices charged for services and products—well, he and a cartel we meet only on
audio conference call. There doesn’t seem to be much of a government here, just
wealthy people controlling all. Weis’ daughter, Silvia, is a spoiled, bored
rich girl who finds her time with Will more exciting than her last 27 years
combined. She becomes infatuated with him, even when Will escapes the police
using her as a hostage to save himself from being falsely arrested for killing
Henry Hamilton. Silvia is a pretty convincing bored, rich girl, played by
Amanda Seyfried (RED RIDING HOOD, 2011, AS THE WORLD TURNS,
1999-2001), with her constant, narrowed-eyed look of intense angst.
In this world of wealth, and especially the scenes where
there is a large crowd of people, the sheer scope of casting this
film became apparent. Seriously, everyone in the world stops aging at 25 years,
so no forty year-old actors could get a job here. Everyone is not only 25, but
pretty. Many of the extras wore make up, I’m sure. But to find a primary cast
who can act and carry a film, actors had to be pulled from film and television.
Kartheiser’s most recent success was television, as was Bomer’s, not to mention
a lot of folks were once actors in soap operas (hence my seemingly-odd choices
in parenthetical credits above, but I do this to make a point). This isn’t a
bad thing. In fact, I like it, it’s good (ok, what song did I just quote?
Anyone?).
What isn’t convincing in this film is the love affair
between Silvia and Will as “Chapter 3″ kicks in, where they pull a
Bonnie & Clyde/Robin & Marion crime spree, stealing time from her
father’s grip and giving it to the poor. Seriously, after losing all the time
he’d gotten from Bryce, Will is down to a few hours remaining. Yet he and
Sylvia in this short span fall in love with each other and have sex—or almost
manage to a couple of times. Their whole relationship felt like a Hollywood
requirement for a love story in every film, even if it needs to be
crowbar-forced into the script.
Woven throughout the three components of the film, two
groups are in pursuit of Will and his time. The Timekeepers, led by Officer
Raymond Leon (Cillian Murphy – INCEPTION 2010, THE
DARK KNIGHT, 2008), look like refugees from the MATRIX (1999)
movies—long black coats, overly-serious expressions, sunglasses. This look did
not work. It worked in THE MATRIX because it was new and stylish,
but here it looks a bit pompous. Murphy’s early scenes tracking Will and trying
to catch him are dull – I mean dull… I was not impressed at
all with how they did up these cops. Until the last third of the film, when the
pursuit of Will and Silvia becomes a personal thing to Officer Leon, then
Murphy breaks his character out of the stereotype and acts human again. It’s
rare for a character to seem so dull and one-dimensional at first, and then
become one of the better players in a film at the end, but that is the case
here.
The other group, the “mob” which terrorizes the poor
district, is led by a pretty dude named Fortis (Alex Pettyfer – I AM
NUMBER FOUR, 2011, BEASTLY, 2011). Initially they are pursuing
Will after he rescues Hamilton from their clutches, then they fade into the
woodwork of the film, forgetting about Will except for an occasional moment
when they accidentally come across him again, eventually leading to a final
showdown—but this is more a scene to show the bad guy (one of them at least,
there are quite a few in this movie) get his comeuppance, rather than any
actual plot resolution.
That’s the thing with IN TIME – there are
so many threads and stories throughout this movie, it was hard as a viewer to
become fully vested with any of them, because there wasn’t enough time spent
in any of them.
As a way to close out, let’s compare IN TIME to GATTACA one
more time. Not everyone liked Niccol’s 1997 masterpiece, but GATTACA works,
with a background story that was huge, and similar in theme to IN TIME, where
this new movie falters. In GATTACA, genetic engineering at
conception produces perfect people, and those born naturally are considered a
lower caste in society. Niccol focused on one story about a natural-born man
who wants to be an astronaut and what he is willing to do to accomplish this.
Granted, the three primary actors were Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman and Jude Law,
and that had a lot to do with the film’s power, but the story was also
narrowly-focused, so the viewer could hold on and relish it.
With IN TIME, an entire film of the poor
district, the daily struggle just to stay alive, the gangs terrorizing the
people for their time and thus their life, the Mission run by a young man
collecting time a minute at a time only to give it away every day, would make
for a pure, simple and fascinating story. The world of the rich, with their
slow movements and eternal life, built on the backs and the lives of the poor,
yet who lead an empty existence, could be another (though less emotional). The
crime spree of Timberlake’s and Seyfried’s characters might also make a good
story, if you keep the pursuit of them by the Timekeeper and the angry reaction
of the gangsters to their giving away of stolen time to everyone: also an
interesting story.
Together, though, it becomes a meal overloaded with too many
rich ingredients, fighting for your taste and attention, dulling the impact of
each. Sometimes three smaller meals over time makes for a better, richer
experience.
I’ll give IN TIME 2.5 Knives out of 5… ok,
back to Strunk & White’s rules: I give IN TIME two and a
half knives out of five.