Time is money in the new sci-fi In Time

In Time

Director Andrew Niccol

Screenwriter Andrew Niccol

Cast Justin Timberlake, Amand Seyfried

The premise: humans are engineered to die at 25, beyond this age you can only live if you have “time” on your clock. How do you accrue more time? If you are one of throng of the proletariat, by working for it, if you happen to be one of the rich, by doing evil capitalist stuff like exploiting the poor, owning banks etc. In this dystopian world you pay for everything with time, from buying a coffee to paying for your bus fare. Poor people struggling to accrue time face increases in the cost of living which drains their clock and potentially brings about their early death. To separate the haves and the have-nots, ghettos have sprung up. These are crime ridden slums where people steal time from each other. In these districts people will “murder you for a week.” Contrasting this is New Greenwich, a bastion for the rich where people are rendered practically immortal by the thousands of years they possess.

So In Time is a not-so thinly veiled metaphor for the inevitable inequality which arises as a result of unrestrained capitalism. It is a prudent metaphor then, at a time of economic stagnation and financial uncertainty. A time when, if the Occupy Wall Street movement is anything to go by, America seems to be waking up to the fact that the unfettered dominance of corporations in its society has a largely negative impact on the majority its population, or at least if they were already aware they are no longer willing to put up with it.

The messages that the film tries to get across are admirable, but where the film falls down is that the cast come across largely as caricatures. The rich spout ideas about social Darwinism and the necessity of a downtrodden underclass whilst carelessly gambling away thousands of years of life. The “timekeepers” (In Time pun-speak for policemen) wax lyrical about the necessity of maintaining the status quo and how too much time in the hands of the poor would “crash the system.” The film rams home the points it makes with the subtlety of a sledgehammer and as a result, leaves the characters feeling distinctly one dimensional. Add to that the fact that the later scenes descend into a series of action movie clichés and you are ultimately left with the feeling that a potentially decent premise has been squandered. Justin Timberlake does an admirable job in the lead but the the supporting cast are merely serviceable due mainly to the flat characters they are asked to portray.

Niccol writes and directs a film very similar to his previous work Gattaca, but one which doesn’t reach the same heights due to a lack of well rounded characters and clunking lack of subtlety in deliverance of its core messages.