In Time (2011, d. Andrew Niccol)

So last year, I saw In Time and was horrimazed at what an absolute mess this movie was on just about every level possible. This belated post is to try and explain why, from a bunch of stream-of-consciousness notes (rants) I made at the time. 

Be warned: I'm just going to go ahead and spoil the whole movie for you. One, it's not possible to talk about the crazy badness of this film without discussing the details, and two, hopefully after reading this you'll not want to see it for yourself. Unless you happen to like complete trainwrecks, in which case I recommend you rent it for cheap, then down a few drinks beforehand if you don't want to be going "...what the - did they just - but that didn't make sense - really?!" every couple of minutes.

So you know you’re in for something awful with the first line - the first time (chortle) there’s a portentous use of the word ‘time' (and there will be many of these) - when we start with Justin Timberlake staring pensively (i.e. blankly) out a window. 

Oh JT. Such a great musician. Such a terrible actor. The king of literal choreography goes all out in his first starring role but is shown to be lacking within minutes of the start. In his face off against Matt Bomer, a quiet one-to-one scene in an abandoned warehouse, Bomer manages to convey more with one look in his pretty blue eyes than JT can even try with his whole body. 

In fact, Matt Bomer comes off best in this whole movie because he looks utterly gorgeous, he's only in this travesty for 5 minutes, and his last scene doesn't involve flinging his dying body into JT's arms so he can weep horribly and scream “NOOOOOO” dramatically to the sky (sorry Olivia Wilde). Vincent Kartheiser comes a close second, well cast and doing his best with the poor material as the cold, rich bastard dad of Amanda Seyfried's character. Of course, when one of your villains is the most logical, intelligent and relatable person in the whole movie, you have problems...oh, and what problems they are!

Apart from JT being so wooden and unconvincing as an actor, Seyfried looks like she’s here only to pick up a pay check in a bad wig. But that might not be all her fault - she's been given absolutely nothing to do as her character, Sylvia, is entirely underwritten as the clichéd sheltered rich girl longing for some excitement in life. When excitement supposedly comes in the form of being Stockholm’d into a Bonnie-and-Clyde lite relationship, it's unfortunate JT and Amanda having zero chemistry. The relationship comes out of nowhere except for the fact it’s scripted and it’s literally laughable - when they mechanically move into place to kiss for the first time, the only thing I could do was giggle incredulously, as did the two rows of people behind me in the cinema. Even more unfortunately, JT has more chemistry with Olivia Wilde, who plays his mother. 

Wait, there’s more! On top of the bad acting, there's odd choppy editing, really terrible lines (poor Cillian Murphy - completely wasted as a character whose incomprehensible motivations waver all over the place - has to utter inane gems such as “I'm a timekeeper...I keep time”), the egregious mis- and overuse of the word time ALL OF THE TIME, and some completely random characters for god knows what reason. Alex Pettyfer as the only British gangster in an Ohio ghetto in a ridiculous and unnecessary subplot - why not? Johnny Galecki, hopelessly miscast as an unbelievable 25-year-old alcoholic - hey, this cast can't look uniformly hot! 

But even more than these sins, this movie hurt me most, deep in my soul, because there was absolutely no internal logic or consistency. Niccol (the Australian writer and director) blow his wad trying to set up and exposit this complex world of rules using time as currency, and then flies in the face of it all in just about every scene and plot twist. Firstly, the monetary system itself. Four minutes for a cup of coffee! Loans of a month at 30% interest! People living literally day to day! Dear sir - no economy could ever run like that .And then supposedly, the solution Will and Sylvia come up with to right all wrongs is to steal 1 million years from Sylvia’s dad (which just made me lol and think of “one miiiiiiillion dollars”). And again, Vincent Kartheiser is the only one who’s smart enough to point out that um, what good's that going to do for the larger population? 

It's like no one understands maths in this world!

And yet, more stupid events occur - like Will and Sylvia robbing a timelender with a smash and grab. You mean no other criminal element in the ‘ghetto’ has ever thought to do the same thing? And then Will and Sylvia able to do this extraordinary crime five more times without getting caught by either the non-existent guards at these timelenders or the cops? Not to mention Will keeps hiding out at the same places within blocks of his crimes, over and over again, and yet the police don’t find them for ages. And when they do finally catch up with Will AT HIS OWN DAMN APARTMENT they park right out in the street so Will and Sylvia can see them coming and have enough time to get dressed and escape out the back – which no cops had covered. Because there's only three cops in this universe. 

Also, while the rich people all have bodyguards, they must really suck because Will manages to hide himself in a pack of them without detection. And when he reveals himself, the other 9 armed guards give up without a fight, and none of them raise any alarms when their wealthy employer is kidnapped and taken hostage. Uh. 

And don’t even get me started on the ARM WRESTLING. That's right, in order to expound on Will’s sob/back story, JT and Pettyfer have the world's most boring and ridiculous confrontation where they arm wrestle TO DEATH. Then there’s the other stupid death scene, with Cillian Murphy killed by the most stupid deus ex machina ever (and yes, once again, it involved impossible time shenanigans). So Will, earlier in the movie, manages to make his 2 hours from capture last from night to day and across several "timezones", overtaking even Sylvia’s clock, but somehow Cillian dies because his character forgets to top up his per diem at just the right moment after surviving 50 years of policing. Riiiiiiiiiight.

I could go on but let me summarise: this movie's not just bad, it's lazy and careless and a waste of some real talents. I mean, Oscar nominated cinematographers! Oscar winning costume designers! The writer of Gattaca and The Truman Show! A really attractive cast, with some fantastic talent (plus JT). And yet, the sum of its products is this fiasco that is so terrible that ripping it to shreds kept Al and I amused for hours afterwards.