In Time: An Interesting Concept, Poorly Executed
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When I first heard that Oscar nominated director Andrew Niccol was writing/directing another dystopian movie, I got very excited, and could not wait to see the movie take form. However, as I saw the actors cast and the direction this movie headed prior to its release, I slowly became more and more skeptical about this movie’s impending success. Andrew Niccol has always been one of my favorite directors, with his work on films such as Gattaca and The Truman Show, and his interesting take on one of my favorite genres of film, the dystopia. For those of you that may not know, a dystopian film is a movie that presents a mirror society, usually shrouded by a false mask of utopia, that brings out certain flaws in our own society. It’s kind of like a usually non-comedic satire. Some commonly blatant examples of dystopian movies are Children of Men, Minority Report, and V for Vendetta. This is a very creative and thrilling genre, and I would recommend these types of movies to anyone. With that being said, I expected this movie to be some-what decent, even after having seen the motley cast that was recruited for this film.
One of the first things I noticed about this movie is the complete randomness of almost all of the cast members. A bunch of different unproven actors have been taken from their spots on awkwardly different TV shows and thrown into this cast. It doesn’t seem like the roles were chosen for the actors, rather that the actors were chosen for the roles. The only solidly experienced actors in this film were Cillian Murphy and Olvia Wilde. Out of all of the actors in this film, both experienced and inexperienced, I felt that Cillian Murphy gave the best performance, and gave this movie the sort of foundation that it needed. Murphy is one of my favorite up-and-coming actors, as he has already appeared in Christopher Nolan’s Inception, Batman Begins, and the Dark Knight, and Danny Boyle’s sci-fi thriller Sunshine. Murphy gives a great performance as the main lawman, Timekeeper Raymond Leon, and he really gives the only believable performance in this movie. I felt that the main character, Will Salas (played by Justin Timberlake), was a great example of a dystopian hero, which entails rising from the ghetto to liberate his people; however I feel that Justin Timberlake was not the right man for this role. He was non-believable as the tough-guy poor man that he was supposed to be playing, and I think that an actor with some action-movie background like Clive Owen or Jeremy Renner would have been better for this movie, even though neither of them look 25.
In Time presents an extremely interesting concept, however this concept seems shallow and undeveloped. This film portrays an alternate society where time is used as currency, and the wealthier you are the longer you live. Will Salas (Justin Timberlake) luckily comes into a large sum of time from a weathered centurionaire (yes, I just made that word up), and is accompanied by the daughter of an economic titan (Amanda Seyfried) as they look to change this oppressive economic system that feeds on the poor. This movie sort of dances around attacking our economic system of capitalism, but it never really delivers the full-fledged attack that would make this a good dystopian movie.
One thing that I really didn’t get about this movie was its concept of death. People die when they run out of money, so people are literally saving for their lives. However, one thing that struck me as odd is that even though the number one cause of death is obviously people running out of time, people can still die from the normal social deaths of things like falling off of a building, or a heart attack, or murder by gunpoint. These “normal” deaths completely undermine the inevitability of death through economic oppression that’s plagues this movie, and it completely derails this concept of the rich being immortal, which is stated blatantly many times in the movie. Another thing I really didn’t get about this movie was the extreme extravagance with which the rich people lived, and how Salas gave into this extravagance almost immediately after accruing a large sum of time. Salas saw people around him in the ghetto dying every day, and working their asses off just to survive until the next day, yet when he gets his money he rides off into the sunset, buys an expensive car, and almost gambles all of his money away in a game of high stakes poker. This all seems to completely undermine the validity of his character, and it really weakens the stereotypical image of this dystopian saint.
The bottom line is that even though this movie had many flaws that I greatly enjoy pointing out, it was an enjoyable movie, and it held my attention almost all the way through. The action scenes were well orchestrated and the visual effects seemed above-average. With a better script and a better, more experienced cast, this movie could have taken a spot alongside of some of the greatest dystopian movies ever made.The scene where Salas kills the leader of the Mad Max-esque “time gang” (Alex Pettyfer) in an extreme version of arm wrestling and then goes on to kill all of his henchmen is actually an extremely good scene. While writing that I just realized how unbelievably stupid that scene sounds on paper. I wonder who came up with that idea, “Let’s have a scene where they arm wrestle with like TIME, but the loser loses his life.” Dumb. Well anyway, I thought that even though movie had a sub-par cast, a poorly written script, and a few terrible attempts at comic relief, it still resulted in an above-average film. While I probably won’t recommend this film to anybody out of the blue, I would encourage most dystopian-loving film fans to give it a try and see what you think. Just make sure you have “the time”. Oh yeah.
My Rating: 6.5/10
Corey B
When I first heard that Oscar nominated director Andrew Niccol was writing/directing another dystopian movie, I got very excited, and could not wait to see the movie take form. However, as I saw the actors cast and the direction this movie headed prior to its release, I slowly became more and more skeptical about this movie’s impending success. Andrew Niccol has always been one of my favorite directors, with his work on films such as Gattaca and The Truman Show, and his interesting take on one of my favorite genres of film, the dystopia. For those of you that may not know, a dystopian film is a movie that presents a mirror society, usually shrouded by a false mask of utopia, that brings out certain flaws in our own society. It’s kind of like a usually non-comedic satire. Some commonly blatant examples of dystopian movies are Children of Men, Minority Report, and V for Vendetta. This is a very creative and thrilling genre, and I would recommend these types of movies to anyone. With that being said, I expected this movie to be some-what decent, even after having seen the motley cast that was recruited for this film.
One of the first things I noticed about this movie is the complete randomness of almost all of the cast members. A bunch of different unproven actors have been taken from their spots on awkwardly different TV shows and thrown into this cast. It doesn’t seem like the roles were chosen for the actors, rather that the actors were chosen for the roles. The only solidly experienced actors in this film were Cillian Murphy and Olvia Wilde. Out of all of the actors in this film, both experienced and inexperienced, I felt that Cillian Murphy gave the best performance, and gave this movie the sort of foundation that it needed. Murphy is one of my favorite up-and-coming actors, as he has already appeared in Christopher Nolan’s Inception, Batman Begins, and the Dark Knight, and Danny Boyle’s sci-fi thriller Sunshine. Murphy gives a great performance as the main lawman, Timekeeper Raymond Leon, and he really gives the only believable performance in this movie. I felt that the main character, Will Salas (played by Justin Timberlake), was a great example of a dystopian hero, which entails rising from the ghetto to liberate his people; however I feel that Justin Timberlake was not the right man for this role. He was non-believable as the tough-guy poor man that he was supposed to be playing, and I think that an actor with some action-movie background like Clive Owen or Jeremy Renner would have been better for this movie, even though neither of them look 25.
In Time presents an extremely interesting concept, however this concept seems shallow and undeveloped. This film portrays an alternate society where time is used as currency, and the wealthier you are the longer you live. Will Salas (Justin Timberlake) luckily comes into a large sum of time from a weathered centurionaire (yes, I just made that word up), and is accompanied by the daughter of an economic titan (Amanda Seyfried) as they look to change this oppressive economic system that feeds on the poor. This movie sort of dances around attacking our economic system of capitalism, but it never really delivers the full-fledged attack that would make this a good dystopian movie.
One thing that I really didn’t get about this movie was its concept of death. People die when they run out of money, so people are literally saving for their lives. However, one thing that struck me as odd is that even though the number one cause of death is obviously people running out of time, people can still die from the normal social deaths of things like falling off of a building, or a heart attack, or murder by gunpoint. These “normal” deaths completely undermine the inevitability of death through economic oppression that’s plagues this movie, and it completely derails this concept of the rich being immortal, which is stated blatantly many times in the movie. Another thing I really didn’t get about this movie was the extreme extravagance with which the rich people lived, and how Salas gave into this extravagance almost immediately after accruing a large sum of time. Salas saw people around him in the ghetto dying every day, and working their asses off just to survive until the next day, yet when he gets his money he rides off into the sunset, buys an expensive car, and almost gambles all of his money away in a game of high stakes poker. This all seems to completely undermine the validity of his character, and it really weakens the stereotypical image of this dystopian saint.
The bottom line is that even though this movie had many flaws that I greatly enjoy pointing out, it was an enjoyable movie, and it held my attention almost all the way through. The action scenes were well orchestrated and the visual effects seemed above-average. With a better script and a better, more experienced cast, this movie could have taken a spot alongside of some of the greatest dystopian movies ever made.The scene where Salas kills the leader of the Mad Max-esque “time gang” (Alex Pettyfer) in an extreme version of arm wrestling and then goes on to kill all of his henchmen is actually an extremely good scene. While writing that I just realized how unbelievably stupid that scene sounds on paper. I wonder who came up with that idea, “Let’s have a scene where they arm wrestle with like TIME, but the loser loses his life.” Dumb. Well anyway, I thought that even though movie had a sub-par cast, a poorly written script, and a few terrible attempts at comic relief, it still resulted in an above-average film. While I probably won’t recommend this film to anybody out of the blue, I would encourage most dystopian-loving film fans to give it a try and see what you think. Just make sure you have “the time”. Oh yeah.
My Rating: 6.5/10
Corey B
