A Waste of Time

Review: In Time

It was bottom of the ninth at Busch Stadium, home of the St. Louis Cardinals, and they were losing 7-5 to the Texas Rangers in the World Series, Game 6. The Cardinals had 2 players on base, but they also had 2 outs and after 3 pitches David Freese was looking at 1 ball, 2 strikes. Everyone assumed it was over. Until Freese hit a triple, sending the 2 players on base home to tie the game. The Cardinals were taking the game into extra innings! 

Buffalo Wild Wings went crazy. Fans gathered around the ridiculous number of televisions shouted, jumped up and down, and hugged their waitresses. I was so enveloped by the atmosphere I almost tossed my basket-full of wings in the air. Then I checked the time. “It’s 11:50,” I reminded Mike. “The movie starts in 10 minutes.”

“I kinda want to stay here and see who wins,” replied Mike, even though neither of us are die-hard baseball fans. “What do you want to do?”

“Well, we were supposed to see In Time tonight, I don’t want to abandon our mission.” So we left BWW, where the rest of the fans stayed to watch the Texans pull ahead only to have the Cardinals miraculously return once more to come back and win it all in the 11th inning, forcing the series to a 7th game. It’s already being called one of the greatest baseball games ever. And I missed it. Instead I was wasting time.

Which is too bad, because In Time actually begins with a rather intriguing premise from writer-director Andrew Niccol: time is currency. Everyone lives freely until their 25th birthday, when they stop aging and are given 1 additional year to live. That year, imprinted on everyone’s arms in an ever-counting down digital clock, gives them time they can use to pay rent. Or buy coffee. Or gamble. Your job pays you in time. You can freely give your time away, but it can also be stolen. And when your time is gone, so are you.

Yet what the movie has in premise it lacks in plot. Justin Timberlake, who certainly tries his best in his first headlining role, is Will Salas, a poor citizen who one day meets the very rich/old Henry Hamilton (White Collar’s Matt Bomer). Hamilton is tired of living and, when Will falls asleep, gives him his time, over a century’s worth. Of course, with his time up, Hamilton dies and leaves Will as the sole suspect in his death to be pursued by the police ("Timekeepers") for the rest of the film. And from there the movie falters.

Aside from a brief and understandable spending spree with his new fortune, Will is constantly reactionary, only responding to events instead of driving the plot as a protagonist should. He has a vague sense that the system of time distribution is corrupt and that time should be more evenly divided among the people. But he never fully develops into the Robin Hood, steal-from-the-haves-to-give-to-the-have-nots character we want him to be. And he never really comes close to toppling the system or causing real change. In fact, by the end of the film Will has actually become the criminal the authorities think he is. Sure, he’s helped a few people along the way, but this is not the social revolution movie it could have been.

In fact, while the theme of “Live your life to the fullest with the time you have” is pretty directly discussed, the film fails to adequately address the more contemporary theme of distribution of power, which is hinted at, but never resolved. Again, this is too bad considering the parallels that can be drawn between the current “Occupy Wall Street” movements and similar scenes in the movie which are never really given the power they could have had.

However, the main problem continues to be that Will lacks purpose, causing the film to lack drive and giving a rather stop-and-go, jagged momentum to the movie. Something interesting will happen, usually when the fantastic Cillian Murphy and his fellow Timekeepers show up, and we think that finally the plot will go somewhere. But that moment passes and Will and Sylvia, Will’s hostage/girlfriend played by Amanda Seyfried (not bad, but she’s given better performances), return to doing nothing truly significant until something else happens for them to react to.

So don’t waste your time with In Time. Watch Game 7 of the World Series instead.

The Final Word: Wait to rent it.