In Time (2011)
Movie Review

Writer/Director Andrew Niccol hit such stratospheric heights with his first film Gattaca, I expected he would become one of the premiere science fiction film makers of his generation.  Sadly, his subsequent films have not borne out this expectation, and his latest film In Time, makes that expectation all the more unlikely.

In Time takes place a few hundred years in the future where everyone is immortal but, not exactly.  You age until you’re 25 years old, then you get one more year to live unless you can somehow get more time added to your life clock.  “Time is money” has a literal connotation in this future.   Basically the rich live forever and the poor scrape for every minute.  Justin Timberlake plays a poor factory worker who tries to disrupt the system.  Cillian Murphy plays a policeman called a Timekeeper who has to contain Timberlake.

The premise is cool.  When I first learned of the movie I thought, hmm, sounds like Harlan Ellison’s classic story “Repent, Harlequin!” Said the Ticktockman.  Well wouldn’t you know it, Harlan filed a lawsuit against the filmmakers claiming they ripped off Repent Harlequin.  He later voluntarily dropped the suit after seeing the film.  No doubt he wanted nothing to do with such a crummy movie.

Ripping ideas from literature is nothing new in Hollywood.  Pretty much all the best science fiction films are recycled ideas cobbled together from sci fi literature, and usually without proper credit.  The surprising thing with this movie is how an interesting premise can be so horrendously botched by a once promising filmmaker.

In Time’s future is so poorly conceived it’s laughable.  Apparently in the future we’ve conquered immortality but we’ve lost the cell phone and the internet.  It’s neat, there are phone booths everywhere.  We’ve also gotten rid of the robots in factories and gone back to manual labor presumably so our groovy star Justin Timberlake can look depressed at work.  And robbing a bank is also a lot easier in the future.  Just crash your car through the bank’s big glass window and grab all the money (time cartridges) from the open safe.  Right, all the time is stored in physical cartridges, not on some computer network, that would be silly.

In this futuristic future, time is a currency.  A person’s remaining time is displayed in a nifty clock that glows green right on your forearm.  But how do we transfer this currency from clock to clock in this far out future?  Why you just touch hands, and you don’t even need a person’s permission. That’s correct folks, no safety features!  You can give or take time from anyone basically at will.  Just sneak up while there sleeping, or hit them over the head with a frying pan and drain their clock.  It’s a lot easier than getting the cash from someone’s bank card.

Besides the poorly imagined setting, there was little else to enjoy about In Time.  The plot was clumsy, the relationships and characters were uninteresting, and the action was drab.  There was an interesting concept here and there but nothing to really hold your interest.  You end up just waiting for the next stupid plot point to happen, and it always does.

Sadly, In Time is a butchered premise essentially pilfered from Harlan Ellison. And sadder still, it continues a trend of declining quality plaguing Andrew Niccol’s science fiction output: Gattaca, brilliant, Simone, decent, In Time, crap.  His next scifi attempt is due out this year (The Host).  If this trend continues, it will be a stinky steaming festering rancid shit pile.  Please Mr. Niccol, break the trend.