When I saw the poster for In Time, my immediate reaction was that I didn't particularly want to see it. If you read my review for Red Riding Hood then you know my thoughts on Amanda Seyfried (and if you haven't, you should coz it's quite funny, even if I do say so myself). And if you've read my review for Friends With Benefits you'll know that that was the first time Justin Timberlake had made any kind of impression on me. But then I saw the trailer and I thought it looked interesting so I decided to give it a go.
In Time tells the story of Will (Justin Timberlake), your average 28 year old from a poor, working class family. The difference here is that this is the future and here, the currency is time, not money. Therefore you stop ageing at 25 and have one year to earn more time. If you run out of time, you die. Will has a chance encounter with a man who has too much time on his hands, literally, he's been alive for more than a century and now just wants to die. He gives Will his time, effectively taking his own life. Just when things are starting to look up for Will, his mother (Olivia Wilde), runs out of time. It's in this moment that Will decides to take matters into his own hands and find a way to give some extra time to those who need it most, the poor.
In Time, to put it simply, is a bit of a waste of time. I'm not sure I've ever seen a film with less of a purpose. There doesn't seem to have been any ultimate goal to this story. It just sort of meanders along aimlessly. We have the back story which I'm guessing is designed to make you feel something for the characters, a way of identifying with them despite the futuristic setting. The characters steal time from the rich and give it to the poor. A sort of modern day Robin Hood. But to what end?
The purpose of the film is even more obscured by the fact that the film doesn't really know what it wants to be. A love story? Sci-Fi? A tale of one man's struggle? It doesn't really know and so it never really achieves any of these fully. And because the film doesn't know what it wants to be, neither does the audience. This undermines the ground work of trying to get us to identify with the characters in the first place.
It's a pity as despite the less than impressive leads (side note to Justin Timberlake - you are terrible at conveying emotion. You need to learn how to cry if you want to be an actor), In Time does have some strong actors in smaller roles. Olivia Wilde, Cillian Murphy and Johnny Galecki (The Big Bang Theory) to name but a few. But there lies a problem here too. See, if everyone is supposed to be 25, why hire an actor like Cillian Murphy who, no offence, looks his 35 years. Or Johnny Galecki, who might not look 36 but he certainly looks older than 25. They should have hired actors who were all 25 or at least under 30, across the board. Instead, we have a mix of actors ranging from 21 to 36, making the older actors look even older compared to the ones who are actually younger than the 25 years they're portraying.
Regrettably, even the film's better actors can't save what starts as an innovative idea that turns into a boring mess of a film. One of my friends pointed out that there's a lot of running in this film. But where are they running to? Do we care. No is the unfortunate answer. 5 out of 10.
Viewing Date - 6th November 2011
UK Release Date - 1st November 2011
Cast Overview:
Amanda Seyfried ~ Sylvia Weis
Justin Timberlake ~ Will Salas
Olivia Wilde ~ Rachel Salas
Cillian Murphy ~ Raymond Leon
Vincent Kartheiser ~ Philippe Weis
Johnny Galecki ~ Borei
Matt Bomer ~ Henry Hamilton
Alex Pettyfer ~ Fortis
Director and Writer ~ Andrew Niccol
