Not Worth Your Time or Money

In Time

** out of ****

Directed by: Andrew Niccol

Starring: Justin Timberlake, Amanda Seyfried, Cillian Murphy, Vincent Kartheiser and Olivia Wilde

Running time: 109 minutes

When 20th Century Fox scheduled their dystopian thriller In Time for theatrical release this October, they probably didn’t realize that their futuristic tale about an uprising against a capitalist regime would have such precedence. As the film plays in thousands of theatres across North America, tens of thousands are camped out not too far from the multiplexes, discussing the same issues that are brought up in the film.

But while In Time may be a zeitgeist-defining film – one that captures the spirit of our times, like last year’s The Social Network and 2009’s Up in the Air – it isn’t necessarily a good one.

It is a flashier if paler version of writer/director Andrew Niccol’s sci-fi debut, the intelligent and thought-provoking Gattaca, which explored how one’s social class could be determined by their DNA. In Niccol's latest dystopia, money has been vanquished as a form of currency and people spend time instead.

After 25 years, humans are genetically engineered to stop aging. From this point on, when they die depends on when their time runs out. At 25, you start with one year of time remaining, and can choose the extent of how to spend your time. Unfortunately, prices are going up: a cup of coffee will set you back four days. To gain time, you need to forget the luxuries and work hard.

Enter factor worker Will Salas (Justin Timberlake), who lives in a dingy ghetto with his mother (Olivia Wilde) and has just a few weeks left on his genetic timeline – a neon green imprint on his left arm tells the audience just how much time Will has left throughout.

One day, Will helps a wealthy man with more than a century left, Henry Hamilton (Matt Bomer), evade a gang that steal time by forcing themselves onto others – in one of the film's more far-fetched ideas, time can be transferred between humans by mere touch.

Hamilton explains to Will that although time can be distributed evenly, it is stockpiled for the rich so they can achieve immortality. “For a few to be immortal, many must die,” Hamilton says. Grim and disheartened, Hamilton transfers the rest of his time to Salas before “timing out” and collapsing off a bridge.

While Will has just won a lottery of time, a camera placed near the scene of Hamilton’s death implicates the young man in the millionaire's death. As the police force, called Timekeepers (led by the always reliable Cillian Murphy), pursue Will, our hero makes a run for the richer Time Zones – which are districts that divide their populations up by social status – in hopes of seeking revenge against these immortal few.

In his travels, he meets the slimy time-loaning magnum Phillipe Weis (Mad Men’s Vincent Kartheiser) and his beautiful, yet rebellious daughter Sylvia (Amanda Seyfried), who takes an instant liking to the prole from across a few Time Zones.

Sure, the concept is intriguing and bears much precedence in today’s frustrating economic climate. But as a science-fiction film, however, In Time isn’t entirely convincing.

For instance, let’s examine the idea that people can transfer time between each other through touch. How can this touch determine who is the giver of time and who is the recipient? How can it calculate exactly how much time is given? What happens if people are walking hand in hand (as Will and Sylvia do several times throughout)? Is there a withdrawal here, as well?

Never mind the space and time leaps between the Time Zones, locations that curiously become smaller as the film accelerates to a climax, but the premise feels utterly incomplete. This universe is a very elementary deconstruction of the disparity between rich and poor, and is not examined with the depth that one would expect from the man who wrote The Truman Show.

It doesn’t help that the cast is mostly flat: neither Timberlake nor Seyfried infuse their characters with a lot of grit, while Niccol’s exposition-heavy script offers little backstory to help them out. Sylvia's disobedience toward her father is hardly explored until she transforms into a Robin Hood surrogate later on, deciding to sell the time from her father’s business to the lower classes.

The youthful cast, chosen to suit the film’s genetic code, make the damaged ghettos look more like a Teen Beat cover spread than a postmodern dystopia. Unfortunately, the only ones with any gravitas onscreen are Murphy and Kartheiser, although they are also victims of the thin characterization.

The ideas that In Time presents are simple yet intriguing, but Niccol’s film falters because it spends too much time outlining the convoluted ideas and not enough time making us care for the people it affects. It’s a timely film, but not a very good one.