In Time (2011)

When it's over, the popular saying "Time is money" becomes literal in this film.  Think Equilibrium meets Bonnie and Clyde meets Robin Hood.  Set in an unknown future, people stop aging at 25 and are engineered to live for one extra year unless they can buy more time to add to their lives.  Time is the currency and can be purchased or sold through the touch of arms.  The rich earn and buy time to live for decades, while the poor cheat, steal, and kill to live day to day, minute to minute.  Justin Timberlake is Will Salas, who decides to cripple the system when his mother runs out of time and dies. On the run from the Timekeeper (Cillian Murphy) and wrongly accused of murder, Salas teams up with a rich socialite, Sylvia (Amanda Seyfried), to give more time to the poor by robbing from Sylvia's rich father.  I loved the concept of this film, which really caught my attention the first 30 minutes in, but once the premise was laid out, the story began to lag and eventually flatlined, never managing to revive itself.  To my disappointment, it never developed into the possibilities it had.  So many unanswered questions:  When did the human population become "engineered?"  Who controls the green neon time counter on the people's arms?  Why is the Timekeeper so obsessed with his job?  What is the relevance of Will's father?  What a pity, so much potential for this film down the drain.  Furthermore, Timberlake's not edgy enough to pull off a Robin Hood guise and Seyfried doesn't pass for a high society femme  fatale. The only worthy  performance  was Murphy's, who's always solid no matter how sloppy the script. 


My rating:  2 out of 5