New Release Review - In Time

Directed by: Andrew Niccol
Starring: Justin Timberlake, Amanda Seyfried, Cillian Murphy, Olivia Wilde

"Time is money" goes the saying, but the opposite is also very true.

Ten years ago when times were good I rarely checked my bank balance; I knew I had enough to survive and never pondered my future situation. Now times aren't so good; I check my balance almost daily. That number you see next to credit available is a clock, a ticking time bomb. The higher the number the longer you have, the closer it gets to zero the closer you are to your possible demise.
Andrew Niccol has taken this idea literally with "In Time". In the future people stop growing at the age of twenty-five and die a year later. However scientists have developed a way to prolong life which replaces currency. Everyone has a countdown timer on their arm which lets them know how long they have left. Put in a days work and you earn more time. It's a great sci-fi concept but like most great concepts in modern Hollywood it's let down by poor execution.
This film is riddled with plot-holes and implausibly stupid decisions by characters. For example at one point we know Timberlake has a hundred years. In a game of poker his opponent dares him to raise two hundred years and he accepts. Where did he get the extra hundred from? It's never explained and the film is full of inconsistencies like this. Personally I think scenes were deleted just to cut down the running time regardless of how essential they were to the plot. This is the sort of contempt and disrespect Hollywood has for it's customers now.

The central concept of "In Time" is this years most brilliant, the actual movie is one of the blandest.
5/10

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