In Time Movie Review (2011)
A charmless action flick in the dystopian future where minutes are currency, In Time gets better the more time you give it.
When you watch a lot of movies, you easily develop some favorites in each genre. Among the action films, The Bourne series is up there for me. You are engaged right from the beginning, and both he and his story are mysterious and kept secret, even from himself. But you slowly begin to like him and hope things for him, which is what I think this film was going for, it just didn’t work.
In Time is about a dystopian future where everyone’s life span is based on a time banking system that begins on your 25th birthday. You will never age past that moment, but when the time that you’ve accumulated runs out, you die. Will, a factory worker, lives with his mom and each works so that they have just enough time to get to the next day. When Will meets a man who gives Will a century of time, Will goes into the richer areas to enjoy life and get revenge for what is happening in the sector he is from. There he meets Sylvia, and the two are taken with each other.
The premise of this action drama is extremely intriguing and unique. Each human has a clock embedded into their arm (or something), and it works like a bank account. You can transfer time between people, keep time in safe places so that you can add it later, or get what is essentially a “time allowance” each day. The biggest concern is that one person will kill another by stealing all of their time. Life has less meaning, as you see dead people in the streets of the poor time zones often. The parallel between the rich and the poor of our own world becomes apparent very quickly.
The problem is that the beginning of the movie is terrible. During the first minutes, I had an, “Oh NO, this is going to be so bad” feeling, because it was. The acting is poor, the story is stark and confusing, and the arms with time on them just feel clunky and strange. And it does not begin to get better until Will leaves his time zone and meets Sylvia.
At this point, I wondered deeply why Amanda Seyfried and Cillian Murphy would have done this film. No shade to Justin Timberlake, Alex Pettyfer, Johnny Galecki, or Olivia Wilde, but Seyfried and Murphy are two of the most successful (and talented) actors working right now. What did they see that I couldn’t?
In Time does get incrementally better as the movie continues. The action sequences are fun, and there is a nice moment of balance between an occurrence with Will’s mom and the same one, later, with Sylvia.
The best part of this uneven film is the Robin Hooding that begins to take place. Will and Sylvia take on a Bonnie and Clyde-type deal to steal from the rich and give to the poor. And even though Seyfried’s fierce haircut never gets less distracting and you don’t care about any character in the movie, it’s kind of enjoyable watching them try to make society more fair for everyone.
Runtime: 109 minutes
Motion Picture Rating: PG-13
Languages Spoken In The Film: English
Should You Watch It? Yes, but only if you love action films
Did I Cry? Nope
My Rating: 2.5/5 Stars
Available: Free on Max and Hulu, to rent on Prime Video, or may be available for free on other streaming platforms
