FILM REVIEW In Time

The business of borrowing time


Fergal Rock

‘The Social Network’, David Fincher’s Oscar-winning take on the genesis of Facebook,  provided Justin Timberlake’s SeΡn Parker cameo with one of the film’s most-quotable lines: “A million dollars isn’t cool, you know what’s cool? A billion.”
In that film, Timberlake’s performance as a millionaire playboy was, unsurprisingly, quite credible. However, ‘In Time’ asks us to consider an altogether different Timberlake. A working class, a broke Timberlake. And this time he’s the lead.
Writer/director Andrew Niccol does a fine line in neat conceits. His debut feature film ‘Gattaca’ (1997) was a classy, dystopian drama that posited the idea of a society governed by eugenics. He received an Oscar nomination for his screenplay for the reality-inverting ‘Truman Show’, and his 2002 feature ‘S1m0ne’, tells the story of a director (Al Pacino) who replaced his star actress with a digital substitute that become an overnight sensation when everyone believed she was real.
‘In Time’ has a similarly smart set-up. In the not-too-distant future, people stop ageing at 25, after which they will live for one more year and then die. The only way to postpone the inevitable is to buy more time. This is easier said than done, given that time is itself the only currency in use. Time, in this case, is presented as a live digital timer, visibly counting down on the forearms of everyone we meet. The more time on your clock, the longer you’ll live, with most people living day by day.
However, the converse is also true. The more time on your clock, the more likely you are to be targeted by The Minutemen; a finely fashioned group who prey on unsuspecting citizens and steal their time. This is the situation Henry Hamilton (Matt Borner) finds himself in until he is rescued by Timberlake’s Will Salas, a poor, good-natured, factory worker.
Hamilton, from the affluent New Greenwich area, has clocked up over a century, guaranteeing him a long, comfortable life, but at 105, he’s grown weary of this existence. Man, he claims, was not meant to live forever and so, while Will sleeps, Hamilton passes his time on to him. When Hamilton ‘times out’ (dies), Cillian Murphy’s chief Timekeeper Raymond Leon suspects Will of stealing Hamilton’s time and sets out to capture him.  
Armed with his new-found wealth, Will leaves the ghetto for New Greenwich, a sleek, soulless sanctuary for the wealthy, where he encounters Phillipe Weis (Vincent Kartheiser) and his daughter, Sylvia (Amanda Seyfried). When the Timekeepers attempt to arrest Will he flees, taking Sylvia hostage, and the film turns into a sort of futuristic Bonnie and Clyde.
There is much to admire about ‘In Time’. The screenplay makes nice use of everyday platitudes (“Have you got a minute?”) and anyone who’s seen ‘Gattaca’ will know that Niccol’s has a keen eye for a good suit. The Minutemen, the residents of New Greenwich and the Timekeepers are all impressively attired. However, Niccol never really roots us in his world. The ‘ghetto’ is never fully realised on screen. New Greenwich is boring and lifeless, although this, presumably, is intentional. Timberlake and Seyfried do their best, but they have little chemistry and much of their dialogue falls flat. There are one or two nice set-pieces, but on the whole the film feels confused.
The best science-fiction films present us with nightmarish visions of familiar worlds and often directly comment on reality as we know it to be. ‘In Time’ isn’t in that category, but it is an enjoyable enough caper all the same.

Rating 6 out of 10