Yet another movie I saw on my interminable flight from India was In Time, the Justin Timberlake-Amanda Seyfried film that came out in October 2011. I was pretty interested in this movie because dystopian sci-fi is a genre that never fails to appeal to me, but under the onslaught of Oscar movies, I forgot all about it. Well, I got my chance to see it last week and it was both interesting and disappointing.
First off, the concept is great. Out of the mind of writer-director Andrew Niccol, this is the story of a world where humans have essentially discovered the Fountain of Youth. They have been genetically modified to stop aging past the age of 25, but as with all good things, this comes with a price. Yes, you will look like you're 25 for the rest of your life, but you are also in charge of determining how long the rest of your life will be. Once you turn 25, a timer on your arm starts counting down one year, and you have to earn more time to keep your time from running out. The saying, "time is money" is now a fact, with time being the sole currency. Except when you run out of it, you can't just declare bankruptcy - you'll just drop dead. This means the rich can live forever, while the poor drop like flies if they can't earn enough time to keep them going past their 26th birthday.
The hero of this story is Will Salas (Timberlake) a factory worker who lives with his 50-year old mother (Olivia Wilde, who of course looks 25 and could be Timberlake's girlfriend, which is mildly confusing) in a poor ghetto-like neighborhood. After a series of events, he finds himself in possession of over 100 years of time, given to him by a rich man who is sick of being essentially immortal. After his mother's untimely death (pun intended), Will decides he needs to exact vengeance upon the ultra-rich who keep all the time for themselves and let the poor struggle for every second. The city is divided up into time zones that demarcate where the rich and poor live - Will lives in Time Zone 12 (oddly reminiscent of the Hunger Games' District 12), and as he travels to the richer zones, he has to pay stiff tolls of up to a year to get to New Greenwich, where the ultra-rich immortals reside. He crashes a party thrown by a rich guy whose daughter, Sylvia (Amanda Seyfried), is a jaded, spoiled, rich kid looking for some excitement. Of course, she gets more than she bargained for when Will is forced to take her hostage in order to flee from the Timekeepers, i.e. the cops, who are hunting him down because they are convinced that he obtained his extra time illegally.
The rest of the movie proceeds as you would expect. Car chases, showdowns, bank robberies, meandering exposition on the plight of the poor and how they are being exploited by the rich. This is really just a story about class differences in our society today and how the world is run by the rich elite who impose their whims on the poor and get away with it. Of course, Will and Sylvia team up to bring justice, Robin Hood-style, and are essentially a Republican's worst nightmare.
Like I said, the premise is fantastic and there's a lot of wordplay that reveals just how many expressions we have that involve the word "time." Unfortunately, Andrew Niccol would have been better off writing a novel to express his ideas than making a movie. Hollywood cannot handle overly complex plots and ideas without lumping a film into a box, so in the case of In Time, what you get is an action movie with high-minded dialogue for those who are paying attention. It's mostly flash and little substance. The actors do the best they can, but they're just thrust into innumerable action sequences (poor Amanda Seyfried spends 90% of her time running in excruciatingly painful-looking heels), and when they do get to talk, they deliver entirely too much earnest exposition that grates on you after a while. We get it, it's unfair for the rich to take advantage of the poor, and we need an uprising to redistribute the wealth. Stop beating the issue like a dead horse and get on with it already.
Ultimately, In Time is great for about a half hour as the plot is explained and the world is realized. But after that, it devolves into standard Hollywood blockbuster fare. There are snippets throughout the movie to explain how things work in this world and to give you a sense of the scope of this dystopian future. I suspect Niccol slipped those in there for those of us with a brain who were still watching. But if you want a film that truly engages you all the way through, this is not for you. Go read The Hunger Games instead.
First off, the concept is great. Out of the mind of writer-director Andrew Niccol, this is the story of a world where humans have essentially discovered the Fountain of Youth. They have been genetically modified to stop aging past the age of 25, but as with all good things, this comes with a price. Yes, you will look like you're 25 for the rest of your life, but you are also in charge of determining how long the rest of your life will be. Once you turn 25, a timer on your arm starts counting down one year, and you have to earn more time to keep your time from running out. The saying, "time is money" is now a fact, with time being the sole currency. Except when you run out of it, you can't just declare bankruptcy - you'll just drop dead. This means the rich can live forever, while the poor drop like flies if they can't earn enough time to keep them going past their 26th birthday.
The hero of this story is Will Salas (Timberlake) a factory worker who lives with his 50-year old mother (Olivia Wilde, who of course looks 25 and could be Timberlake's girlfriend, which is mildly confusing) in a poor ghetto-like neighborhood. After a series of events, he finds himself in possession of over 100 years of time, given to him by a rich man who is sick of being essentially immortal. After his mother's untimely death (pun intended), Will decides he needs to exact vengeance upon the ultra-rich who keep all the time for themselves and let the poor struggle for every second. The city is divided up into time zones that demarcate where the rich and poor live - Will lives in Time Zone 12 (oddly reminiscent of the Hunger Games' District 12), and as he travels to the richer zones, he has to pay stiff tolls of up to a year to get to New Greenwich, where the ultra-rich immortals reside. He crashes a party thrown by a rich guy whose daughter, Sylvia (Amanda Seyfried), is a jaded, spoiled, rich kid looking for some excitement. Of course, she gets more than she bargained for when Will is forced to take her hostage in order to flee from the Timekeepers, i.e. the cops, who are hunting him down because they are convinced that he obtained his extra time illegally.
The rest of the movie proceeds as you would expect. Car chases, showdowns, bank robberies, meandering exposition on the plight of the poor and how they are being exploited by the rich. This is really just a story about class differences in our society today and how the world is run by the rich elite who impose their whims on the poor and get away with it. Of course, Will and Sylvia team up to bring justice, Robin Hood-style, and are essentially a Republican's worst nightmare.
Like I said, the premise is fantastic and there's a lot of wordplay that reveals just how many expressions we have that involve the word "time." Unfortunately, Andrew Niccol would have been better off writing a novel to express his ideas than making a movie. Hollywood cannot handle overly complex plots and ideas without lumping a film into a box, so in the case of In Time, what you get is an action movie with high-minded dialogue for those who are paying attention. It's mostly flash and little substance. The actors do the best they can, but they're just thrust into innumerable action sequences (poor Amanda Seyfried spends 90% of her time running in excruciatingly painful-looking heels), and when they do get to talk, they deliver entirely too much earnest exposition that grates on you after a while. We get it, it's unfair for the rich to take advantage of the poor, and we need an uprising to redistribute the wealth. Stop beating the issue like a dead horse and get on with it already.
Ultimately, In Time is great for about a half hour as the plot is explained and the world is realized. But after that, it devolves into standard Hollywood blockbuster fare. There are snippets throughout the movie to explain how things work in this world and to give you a sense of the scope of this dystopian future. I suspect Niccol slipped those in there for those of us with a brain who were still watching. But if you want a film that truly engages you all the way through, this is not for you. Go read The Hunger Games instead.
 |
| Seyfried & Timberlake: Running for their lives for the umpteenth time |
No comments:
Post a Comment