In Time (2011) Review: Brilliant Idea, Blunt Chase

Is In Time worth watching?

Mostly yes. In Time has one of the best science fiction premises of its decade, a world where minutes of life are literally the currency, and enough style and pace to make it an enjoyable watch. Andrew Niccol turns the idea into a sharp satire of inequality, and Roger Deakins’s cinematography gives it a cool, polished look. The reservation is that the film soon trades its big ideas for a routine chase-and-romance plot, and much of the dialogue is pun-heavy and on-the-nose.

What is In Time about?

In Time is set in a near future in which people have been engineered to stop ageing at 25. After that birthday, a glowing clock on each person’s forearm starts counting down a single year, and time becomes the only money that matters: it pays for coffee, rent and bus fares, and when your clock hits zero, you die. The rich live, in effect, forever. The poor live day to day, sometimes literally.

Will Salas (Justin Timberlake) is a factory worker from the ghetto time zone of Dayton, where everyone runs and nobody has a spare hour. When a weary stranger hands him an unexpected fortune in time, Will crosses into New Greenwich, the district of the ultra-rich, where he meets Sylvia (Amanda Seyfried), the sheltered daughter of a powerful time-lender (Vincent Kartheiser). A dogged Timekeeper, Raymond Leon (Cillian Murphy), is soon on his trail. Andrew Niccol writes and directs this American production in English, and it runs 109 minutes.

A premise with real bite

Niccol, who wrote The Truman Show and directed Gattaca, has always been good at building worlds around a single unsettling idea, and this is one of his best. The time-as-currency concept makes the economics of poverty visceral: prices rise overnight, loans come with crippling interest, and the poor literally run out of life while the rich hoard centuries. As satire, it is blunt but effective, and it gains relevance every time conversations about the wealth gap return.

The world-building is often clever. Characters in Dayton move in a hurry, while the rich of New Greenwich stroll slowly and speak with the calm of people who have all the time in the world. Because everyone looks 25, parents and children appear the same age, a disquieting touch that the film uses well. Deakins shoots it all with a sleek, retro-futurist gloss, with vintage-looking cars and sharp architecture that make the future feel both familiar and cold.

Where the chase takes over

Once Will and Sylvia go on the run, the film becomes a fairly standard action romance. The robberies and pursuits are competently staged, but the story leans on convenience, and the Robin Hood-style plot never examines the system as deeply as the opening act promises. The script’s fondness for clock-related wordplay also becomes wearing.

Justin Timberlake is likeable and physically convincing but lacks the intensity the role needs, and Amanda Seyfried’s Sylvia is written more as an accomplice than a person. Cillian Murphy is the standout, bringing weary moral complexity to a lawman who understands exactly how unfair the system he enforces is. Olivia Wilde and Matt Bomer make strong impressions in small roles.

Who should watch In Time?

It is well suited to fans of high-concept science fiction, viewers who enjoy dystopian stories with a social message, and anyone looking for a slick, easy-to-follow thriller. It works as entertainment rather than a deep meditation. Content includes gun violence, fights and some mild language, making it suitable for teenagers and up. At under two hours, it is a quick watch.

If you like its ideas, try these next:

• Minority Report, Steven Spielberg’s smarter future-noir chase, which balances action and ideas with more confidence.
• The Matrix Reloaded, for bigger-budget science-fiction action about people fighting a system designed to control their lives.

The verdict

In Time is a smart premise wrapped in an ordinary thriller, but the premise is strong enough, and the film stylish enough, to make it worth a watch. Cillian Murphy and Roger Deakins’s images elevate it, even if the script never quite spends its ideas as wisely as it could.

Rating: 3.5/5