Andrew Niccol
In Time

What would happen if starting at 25 years old we were forced to scramble for time to live?

This is the vital question of the feature film "In Time," the fourth by Andrew Niccol, a New Zealand filmmaker always close to science fiction and everything connected to it. Here we are in a not entirely specified future where humans are programmed to live until 25. Then, automatically, a timer for another year activates, and everyone tries in every way to "earn time," whether legally or illegally.

Time and its passing become for Niccol the money of our days: one is not rich unless possessing a vast reserve of time. The unspecified city where everything unfolds is not coincidentally divided into two zones: in what is called the "ghetto," there are all those who have a reduced lifetime. In contrast, those residing in New Greenwich are the affluent in this unique society. They have money, but above all, time, which is necessary to survive. The protagonist (played by an unconvincing Justin Timberlake) will learn the difference between the two realities following a series of events that will further complicate his already precarious situation.

There is an original concept at the base of "In Time", just as there were all the premises for a good product. Niccol is a capable director, and the distant "Gattaca" is there to prove it. The class and formal perfection of the Oceania filmmaker are not lacking, but this time more details fail to convince. Firstly, the pair of actors Timberlake/Seyfried: too predictable, too "childish," stiff. Two actors that don't work are a burden for the entire film. But what does not fully convince about Niccol's work is the lack or in any case the weakening of his authorial streak: there is little of his cinema in this movie, which resolves into an easy action and a screenplay not up to par.

"In Time" has moments of originality alternating with sequences that do not seem to be Niccol's work. The film is watchable for its good rhythm, but it possesses too many derivative aspects. It does not channel its screentime into a final climax that can fully engage the viewer from that "aseptic" atmosphere breathed from the first shot.

To terribly oversimplify, one could say that the underlying idea degenerated into simple entertainment, almost with a wink to the modern action movie, thus losing sight of the authorial imprint.