In Time (2011)

I’m truly sad to say that I expected a lot more from this film. I heard that there was a thriller film with Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried. That never sounds good. But then I saw the four minutes of footage released at Comic-Con, and I was taken aback. In Time quickly shot up from off my radar to right on the spot, one of my most anticipated films of the year. I just wanted a really great sci-fi film of the year to companion Source Code after the disappointment that was I Am Number Four. I still liked it. But a lot of people didn’t, but that is beside the point. In Time takes place in the near future, where science has gotten rid of the aging gene. People stop aging, and instead of people dying of old age, they can die of having their time run out. People are genetically implanted with a clock on their arms, and when the clock hits zero, you do. You just collapse right then and there. In one of the bigger flaws of the film, we see a man named Will Salas (Justin Timberlake), who is apparently the first person to find something wrong with the system, which is still only found out after his mother (Olivia Wilde, which resulted in a very odd scene, one that I thought would go a very different way than “Hey, mom.”) had died. Salas is living in the poor part of town (where every single person still looks like they’ve spent twenty minutes in a trailer getting themselves all prettied up), and he and his friends wake up every day just hoping they’d have more time on their hand than hours in the day. But when he meets a man at a bar with a death wish and over a century on his wrist, Salas ends up with the time, and, through a little lethal gambling, becomes one of the single richest men in the world. After gaining acquaintance with millionaire Phillipe Weis (Mad Men’s Vincent Kartheiser) and his daughter Sylvia (Amanda Seyfried), Salas finds himself accused of stealing the time by timekeeper Raymond Leon (Cillian Murphy), and goes on the run, kidnapping Sylvia to seal it off. And then the sci-fi glory that this premise should have been is thrown to the backseat for a Robin Hood or Bonnie & Clyde film, one that I did not pay for. My biggest problem with this film is that it is not what it was marketed as, and not what I paid for. I know that’s kind of a stupid complaint, and I don’t mean it to the extent of the idiotic lady who sued critically acclaimed action drama Drive for not being dumb loud action film Fast Five (I have not seen either of these films, I am just basing my bashing of Fast Five on the first Fast & Furious film), but I’m still a little mad. But even when I get something else than what I paid for, I can still have a good time at the movies. And I did have a good time at the movies here. There are points of this film that are fun, slick, and energetic. That being said, there are a decent amount of points that just make you groan, or roll your eyes. And sadly, the sci-fi isn’t strong enough to take the film out of those dark spaces. The film jugs sort of lags on, but does have some fun moments, and a concept way too interesting and smart for anyone involved.
7.5/10