In Time stars Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried as two modern day heroes stealing from the rich to give time to the poor but this sci-fi thriller does not capture your attention enough.
Film making 12/25
Video 25/25
Audio 20/25
Bonus Features 3/25
Total 60/100
A modern day high-tech Robin Hood first kidnaps the daughter of a wealthy man then turns her against the rich system that allows them to control the lives of everyone else. Time is really money with In Time where time has replaced money but again the rich control everything in the world including the amount of time the poor have to live.
In Time stars Justin Timberlake as Will Salas, a hard worker trying to struggle through life making enough time to live by. Scientists have discovered how we can live forever so they had to also do something about all those people cluttering up our planet.
When people turn 25 they stop aging as well as start a clock that is embedded in their forearm with one year of time on it, when that runs out you’re dead. You have to work to make more time but everything also costs time like rent or food but you can also trade time by grabbing someone else’s forearm.
Theft of time is one problem in this society but also the rich have so much time they can live seemingly forever but there is more going on behind the scenes than most people know. Will sees a rich man, Henry played by Matt Bomer, in a bar in the slums and advises the man to leave but before he does a gang walks in and starts to harass him.
Will leads Henry to safety and they hide in an abandoned building but the rich man was not in the slums just to hide out, he was looking for trouble. Henry tells Will that the rich are using the poor to gain even more time for themselves and decides he doesn’t want to continue stealing from the poor.
While Will sleeps Henry gives him almost all his time, then falls of a bridge taking in the sites as his last seconds tick away. Will now has all the time in the world and rushes home to his mother who has always been low on time but they do not make it in time and she dies as well.
Will is now distraught and uses his new found wealth to invade the rich world and finds Sylvia played by Amanda Seyfried. She knows where her father’s banks are and how to break in so after a bit of fancy footwork for Will to interest Amanda in his world they steal from the rich to give to the poor.
In Time also has the usual bad guy rich banker type in Amanda’s father who is greedily stealing from the poor along with the consortium of other rich folk. You get the usual cop figure in “Timekeeper” Raymond, played by Cillian Murphy, who always gets his man but finds a great adversary in Will and Sylvia.
The film was written, directed and produced by Andrew Niccol and just misses on so many levels what could have been a great film in the style of Blade Runner. A little more explanation and putting the viewer’s mind at ease about the transition of the world going from money to time and how people were forced into it would have been nice.
Basically some back story to fill in the myriad questions that kept popping up in my mind would have been better like just why everyone on the planet went to this system. Other questions abounded and the film had a lot of cheesy scenes as well, Wills mom running to her son while he had all that extra time and she dies in his arms as her last second ticks away.
The film just had too many holes in the plot and story as well as a very weak character development so the film just fell flat on me. I sat through the movie and kept picking up ways to improve the whole work that just kept me from actually enjoying the movie at all.
Some things that did work exceptionally well were video and audio quality which were both fantastic for the whole movie and without any problems. Video is shot in digital with color in warm and clear hues that lend to the varying differences between the clean looking rich neighborhoods and the slums of the poor.
Audio is great with well-done surround and the DTS-HD Master Audio track comes off as very well done overall but with a few less than perfect areas. The sound and especially surround is well done, you get to really hear the full sound stage with good use of rear speakers for small things that add to the feel of the film.
One problem though is the use of a more generic sound track for the theme music that just adds too much of the familiar action film to the movie that detracts more than it adds. The film just has too much of a lower budget feel and not a fully fleshed out story or production to get your attention and keep it.
Bonus content also lends a lot to the lower quality overall with only one additional feature in a fake documentary in how they came about discovery humanities immortality. They added some trailers and deleted/extended scenes but the single bonus content of worth just highlights the wasted space of the Blu-ray edition.
A montage of news clips talking about the world changing scientific breakthrough of immortality along with the inevitable riots that would follow. Public upheaval of trying to force people to only live till their 25 and then start the countdown to death and the inevitable wars where whole countries’ would resist this.
I kept thinking of ways to flesh out the story behind the movie and the possible consequences of the ideas behind In Time that I just did not enjoy the movie all that much. In Time is just not that well thought out and could have been much better than it is so a recommendation is just not here.
If you just have to see this film rent the Blu-ray version to get all the fantastic visual content available but only purchase In Time for an oddball collection of sci-fi films that could possibly see a cult following.
In Time website