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Have I ever reviewed a movie and described it as, "balls?"
No?
In Time is balls.
And before you rush to comment, asking what exactly I mean: I'm not using that word in the sense of, "that guy's got balls!" meaning courage and awesomeness. I mean it in its truest form, to express anger and disappointment.
Let me paint you a picture: it's the future because just go with it, and someone - somehow - Science'd away the part of our genetics that makes us grow old and die, and Science'd in a luminescent countdown clock on your entire forearm. Why? Because here's the twist! At the age of 25 you stop aging and your clock starts. You now have one year to live.
Put away your Logan's Run posters because that's not all. Time is now the world's currency; people earn, trade and spend their remaining days, hours and minutes like the rest of us do money. Only catch is there's no overdraft protection ... if your clock hits zero for any reason you drop dead in the street. The rich wander around comfortably with centuries to spare while the poor work, steal and fight for mere hours. Suddenly the phrase, "living day to day" takes on a whole new meaning.
I know, it sounds freaking awesome, right?
But that's the problem. It's not lacking at least an interesting concept. No, really. Everyone and their mother can sense that the concept is fine. It's literally everything about its execution that kills it.
They never really establish any of the rules governing the universe. For example, how is someone capable of stealing your time? With money, it's easy enough for someone to knock a person down and steal the cash in their wallet. Gambling, even: toss your savings into the pot and lose it all on a bad hand of poker. But for the people of In Time all you have to do is knock a person out, hold their hand and leave them with minutes to live, if you're feeling generous. It's one thing to steal, but how desperate are you and how low must your morals be if you can kill a stranger just because?
Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried, while both really boring, spend probably half the film Robin Hood-ing around, stealing time from the Time Loan Bank Stores and giving it away to the poor sectors. So they're supposed to be the heroes, right?
But then there's the Time Keepers, an F.B.I.-like force who govern the spending and passing of time, ensuring each Time Zone (ha, ha) remains within its limits. The two leads are disrupting the system and are about to bring everything crashing down, destroying the planet's economy and destroying population control. After all, as suggested early in the film, "if everyone lived forever, where would we put them?"
So are the Time Keepers sorta the heroes now? It's clear Timberlake's character doesn't seem to grasp this concept and is only interested in making sure his people aren't dying in the streets; and he's really only causing more harm than good in the long-run, as the rich keep raising the costs of everything to get the stolen time back. The poor sectors are falling into anarchy, dammit!
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Pictured: Anarchy.
I'm all for a story where everyone more or less is morally gray. It can make for some damn good characters and even better writing. The problem with In Time is how much gray is on display. Aside from the Evil Corporations Who Own Millions Of Years And Are Evil I can't see a clear hero or villain to root for and wish failure upon, respectively.
And don't get me started on Timberlake's character. The guy has the mind-bending and reality-warping luck of Longshot [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longshot] in the way he plays games of chance and drives backwards in chase scenes. It's like watching someone try to emulate James Bond for an entire movie because it would be funny, but only comes off confusing at best. I could go on but it would span several paragraphs and it would be a waste of everyone's time.
The funniest thing about the movie is how horrible the pacing is. Isn't it ironic how a movie about the preciousness of time rushes about from point to point and scene to scene and has no real sense of time passing whatsoever? Constantly we'll be shown a shot of the lead duo's arm-clocks with literally two minutes remaining and somehow manage to make the six-minute run to the local pawn shop with time to spare for the sake of dramatic tension. I have a grocery store across the street from my apartment and it takes maybe five to ten minutes to get to its door, depending on the cooperativeness of the elevator. There is no way these two made it that distance in one.
Seriously, Right near the end of this colossal box of failure both leads find themselves just standing there after the final confrontation with less than 20 seconds (how they lost the 30+ years they had the scene before they never explain). They both manage to run up a hill and get a wireless transfer from a car (and because Seyfried is lagging behind, half of the way back to save her) in less time it would take me to walk down the hall from my couch to the door! God ... damn it, Andrew Niccol, writer/director of In Time, there's adding the illusion of real time and creating a sense of urgency for the sake of excitement and then there's pulling off a freaking miracle!
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Quick, we only have a minute to get across town! We can make it!
I've often walked out of really lame movies (especially science fiction) where all I can really talk about is how it would have made for really interesting mini-series, or even a regular series hoping to catch on and have a long run. Too much time passes, too many characters show up and drop off only to come back for a second or two of minute relevance.
Like I said, the concept is really interesting, excusing the film's retarded title. There's a serious sense this could have been actually watchable, even decent had it been stretched over a number of episodes. There's a living, breathing world that could have been explored at an incredible depth, supporting characters who could have been afforded development and screen time, the grandiose economy plot seen with more focus from all sides. I liked the idea being described, I even liked the scene where Seyfried and Timberlake first officially meet: the man she's with noticing Timberlake's interest in her and his comment is along the lines of, "I know what you're thinking. Is she my mother, sister, daughter? You're especially hoping she's not my wife. It used to be so much easier once upon a time."
Rock.
Needless to say, In Time really isn't worth watching. Save your money, save your time and go do something else with your life.
If you enjoyed this review, stop by Not The Demographic [http://notthedemographic.blogspot.com] for more. I have leftover Hallowe'en candy I might share.