Why is Timberlake starring in this film, when the far superior Cillian Murphy, Matt Bomer and Vincent Kartheiser are stuck as his bit players? It’s fairly unclear, since every scene he’s in with these people is laughable. Timberlake is good at posing, but he’s not good at acting. He can make an angry face and a serious face and a sexy face, but when it comes to fully embodying a character and truly giving him life, Timberlake can’t do that. His portrayal of hero Will Salas is all surface; he’s a pretty mannequin with stubble pretending he’s a tough guy with morals. It doesn’t work.
It doesn’t help, either, that everything about the film just feels so contrived — the cars are snagged from “The Jetsons,” the outfits from “Equilibrium” and “Blade Runner,” and the story from writer Harlan Ellison, who is suing the studio and director Andrew Niccol for essentially stealing the plot of his 1965 short story, “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman,” without paying him anything for it. That story was about a future where everyone pays for everything in time, and Timekeepers keep the peace — just like “In Time” is about a future where everyone pays for everything in time, and Timekeepers keep the peace. Hmm. Sounds familiar.
In some unnamed year, humans have been genetically engineered to stop aging at 25, and then they’re supposed to get only one more year after that. With the amount of time they have left glowing in green on their forearm, everyone pays for everything in minutes, hours and days — a bus ride home can cost two hours, for example — so the poorer people not only have less money but also less time to live than the exorbitantly rich, who can live forever. If the social implications of this weren’t clear enough for you, snobby wealthy characters also call the poorer parts of the world the “ghetto.” The film’s messages about financial inequality are that transparent.
Anyway, in this world lives Will (Timberlake), who looks the same age as his mother (Olivia Wilde); they live on a day-to-day basis, budgeting out their time so they can pay rent, eat and travel back and forth through Dayton, their little slice of hell. But when Will one night saves Henry (Bomer), a guy with 100 years, from local thug Fortis (Alex Pettyfer), he stumbles into a new life after Henry gives him his time and then commits suicide. “The day comes when you’ve had enough. … We want to die. We have to,” says Henry, a painfully handsome 105-year-old. So. Handsome.
But while Will now has all this newfound time, he immediately catches the notice of Timekeeper Raymond Leon (Murphy), who thinks Will must have murdered Henry for the century. The two start a cat-and-mouse chase through the area, as Will moves from Dayton to upper-class New Greenwich and ingratiates himself into the world of millionaire businessman Philippe Weis (Kartheiser) and his daughter Sylvia (Amanda Seyfried). When Leon comes knocking, Will goes running — but with Sylvia as his hostage.
What comes next is some classic Stockholm syndrome, some poor Robin’s Hood-like character development and a bunch of theorizing — read: lecturing — about why the rich are rich and the poor are poor and how we can change the system. It’s a strange coincidence that this film comes out while the Occupy Wall Street movement is sweeping the world, but “In Time” doesn’t mean anything it says. Its suggestions are all surface, and seem incredibly disingenuous coming from a film that cost millions to make and stars a pop singer who can’t act seriously to save his life. It doesn’t help that Timberlake’s scenes with Seyfried seem incredibly forced — she either whispers or speaks in a flat tone, much like she did in “Red Riding Hood,” and the two lack any romantic chemistry — or that his with Murphy are incredibly embarrassing. Murphy truly embodies his authoritarian stickler character, from his perfect pronunciation to his purposeful stride, while Timberlake just oozes superficiality. His crying scene, in which he actually stares up at the sky and screams, is particularly bad.
Casting decisions matter, and “In Time,” they’re the film’s fatal flaw. Surrounding Timberlake with a bunch of actors more talented than he is underlines his lack of finesse, and in a film that piles on the sci-fi imagery and the revolutionary rhetoric, any sense of subtlety is lost. “In Time” isn’t just a little artificial, it’s overwhelmingly so — from its main actor right down to everything else.
