In Time

Director:  Andrew Niccol
Cast: Justin Timberlake, Amanda Seyfried, Vincent Kartheiser, Olivia Wilde and Cillian Murphy
Releasing in cinemas: 27 October 2011
Rated: M

Andrew Niccol, late the writer/director of Gattaca, now comes up with In Time, an audacious if marginally silly science-fiction allegory on corporate greed. You're brought up to speed in the first minute about how time becomes currency in the future. It’s a headbanging concept to swallow in a hurry, but your acceptance of this is important as to what follows. There's little or no explanation of how time currency came about, or the way it quite works. So while you're getting your mind around this, we're introduced to a young man calling a woman  his own age “mum”, suggesting life as we know it might be a bit skewed. For it seems, adding to the confusion, everyone on the planet stops aging at 25. Then they're on borrowed time which has to be earned, given or stolen.

Will Salas (Justin Timberlake) lives with his mother (Olivia Wilde) looking young enough to be his girlfriend in a grungy zone of this future world, where time is the currency of choice. They have to struggle to makes ends meet, for if they don't, they meet their ends. This is because if you run out of the traded currency time, you die instantly. A luminous code on your wrist shows what time you have left.

Then along comes a young guy (Matt Bomer) with a surfeit of time, who doesn't want to live forever. The newcomer gives all his time to Salas, who is then suddenly wealthy beyond imagination. Lots of years to spare on Salas' clock, however he's unable to save his mother in time.

On the run for the crime he hasn't committed and a target for local gangsters, Salas heads to the wealthy people's zone, New Greenwich, here everyone has time to spend and enjoy extended lives. Salas buys a flash car, gets in bad with the time police, and meets lovely heiress Sylvia (Amanda Seyfried), whose father Philippe Weis (Vincent Kartheiser) is the corporate chief of a vast empire storing and controlling the flow of time. It's real Lewis Carroll stuff when we see a shot of Philippe's mother-in-law, wife and daughter together, and they all look the same age. Nobody is over 25 in appearance.

Soon Salas teams up with Sylvia who's something of a rebel, and they become a future Robin Hood and Maid Marion, robbing the rich (of time) and giving it to the poor. This fails to amuse the time police, led by the determined Raymond Leon (Cillian Murphy). A gang of hoodlums is also in hot pursuit. The wacky nature of the story will confound some, but the slick action keeps you on track. Never mind though that there are a few holes in the plot and a certain lack of chemistry between the leads. 

Justin Timberlake (The Social Network) plays a decent guy at heart, concealing an underlying rawhide toughness, helping out the time-poor at every opportunity. Timberlake leaps into the part with a flair for action, including a lot of sprinting around, and driving backwards at high speed, now obligatory in car chases. Amanda Seyfried (Red Riding Hood), she of the Bette Davis eyes, sports bob-cut red hair in a nod to Run Lola Run, and is suitably fetching as a feisty damsel in distress - a bonus being able to run quickly in high heels. She seems blissfully unaware of any sexual attraction from Timberlake, and plays the romantic bits super cool.

The remainder of the cast all look their parts. Cillian Murphy (Inception) with his gaunt hungry expression and steely gaze, makes a convincing Time Policeman, obsessed like Inspector Javert to capture Salas cheating the system. Vincent Kartheiser (Mad Men TV) with his benign cherubic face hides the duplicitous and ruthless nature of the man in charge of time.

Andrew Niccol, as writer and helmsman of this flight of imagination, manages to keep the pace brisk and gloss over the incredibility of the storyline. Action, when it starts, goes with a bang. Striking images are crisply rendered with sleek camera movements. The poor time zone has the frowzy look of 1984, contrasting the swish ultramodern Greenwich with its lavish furnishing of French antiques.

You need a big leap of faith, for there are moments when it's hard to accept the basic premise. In the wind-up In Time turns out to be an offbeat thriller with enough action to keep you from snoozing.  

John Bale