The (Un)limited

Time is of the essence in Andrew Niccol’s new thriller In Time, starring Justin Timberlake and that lucious creature known as Amanda Seyfried.

It is power, it is money, it is life. It. Is. Everything.

The futuristic movie tells the story of the lengths people go to in an era where people stop aging at 25. Not much of a reason is given for this marvel of bioengineering, really...something about crowd control, if memory serves.

The point is, once one turns 25, a neat Day-Glo green clocks lights up in people’s left arms, ticking down one year.

Timberlake, more leading-man-ish than ever, plays Will Salas, a 25-year-old going on 28 from the time-poor side of the tracks. (His 50-year-old mother is played by the beautiful Olivia Wilde.)

Will has always lived day to day ever since his time started running out, sprinting from one place to the other, making sure he has enough left on his clock to live to die another day.

One night at his local watering hole, he meets the morose Henry Hamilton, a handsome fellow played by Matthew Bomer, who tells Will that even if he could live forever he may not want to. Time tends to catch up with the mind after a century.

Yeah, that’s about how much time Henry has on his clock (he is, in the way of In Time, rich), and after Will helps him get away from Fortis (Alex Pettyfer) and his gang of time thieves (much to the chagrin of the wealthy suicidal who had spent his evening flaunting his left arm around), Henry bequeaths his fortune to his golden-hearted Good Samaritan.

Henry carries out his plan to end it all on his own (he was pretty much asking Fortis to clean out his clock), timing out from the top of a bridge, leaving Will to appear as the prime suspect in his death.

A second passing (bye-bye, mama Salas) sends Will into an indignant quest to even out the scales. He heads to New Greenwhich, which is where people with a lot of time on their hands live (you know because everyone walks), and sets out to steal the time he feels they are taking away from everybody else.

He finds an unlikely ally in Sylvia Weis (Seyfried), the sheltered and unexcited daughter of one of the wealthiest men on Earth, banker Philippe Weis (Vincent Kartheiser), and, together, they go on an us-against-them crusade to even out the playing field.

Will and Sylvia put on their Robin Hood pants and go all Bonnie and Clyde (at first, she is his all-too-willing hostage, but after she saves him from a timekeeper...a cop, in essence, played by Cillian Murphy...she then becomes his more-than-a-sidekick accomplice).

In Time is an effective piece of entertainment, I think, that works because it subtly asks of its audience provocative questions without getting in the way of enjoyment.

I think that’s important, and I can’t imagine you will find any fault in that. Other than the hotties that star in it don’t spend a little more time showing us more than their arms as a way to tantalize not only one another but us, who, obviously, woulda preferred it if their secret time stamps had been placed somewhere sexier.

My Rating ***

Photo: 20th Century Fox.