By Joshua Knopp/managing editor
A dystopia where no one would have time to read movie reviews? That’ll never happen.
In Time puts on display a world in which aging has stopped and time has literally become money. Humans age until 25 and can live indefinitely as long as they have the time.
Main character Will Salas (Justin Timberlake) lives literally day-to-day in this society’s ghetto with his mother, Rachel (Olivia Wilde). After inheriting a century from a stranger with a death wish (Matt Bomer), he moves into the rich part of town and runs afoul of the society’s police force, called timekeepers.
The premise alone should fill an auditorium, and the details will keep an audience coming back. The audience isn’t simply told that every second counts, they are shown. Actions of members of the lower class are direct and fast as they value the seconds they’re saving. The upper class saunters through town as an expression of status. If a countdown is displayed during an action sequence, that’s how long the sequence takes in real time as well.
Details common with every movie are also impeccable. The acting, headlined by Cillian Murphy as a straight cop and Amanda Seyfried as a rich girl with an extreme case of Stockholm syndrome, are uniformly excellent. The character development is beyond genius and complements these performances perfectly. The visuals are subtly fantastic. The music is reminiscent of the Halo video game series — mesmeric piano that doesn’t really fit the foreground but is too beautiful for anyone to care.
In Time doesn’t fall into the pitfall of many science fiction stories that focus on the cool stuff that will never exist. In Time is, instead, about the real world. The class system in place is a dark mirror for the current wealth split. It is technically possible to move up a class, but the system actively discourages it. The cost of living in the ghetto is strictly controlled to keep the proletariat’s life cycles milling. Some crime is even condoned, all in an attempt to keep the poor down.
This movie is a wonderful example of many areas of filmmaking — writing, directing, acting, camerawork, music, character development, world development, tasteful sex sequences, having not just a high concept but the gall to follow it to its logical conclusion — the list goes on and on.
This is a truly superb movie in every way. Appropriate for the vast majority of audiences, pretty much everyone should take the time to see it.