The pReview Re-viewing of..
In Time
highly recommended to check out the trailer and then read!
by Jeff Finck
written: 10/3/2011
The premise: In the future, you don't age past 25.. however, you have a year to earn more time or you die. And this is a continual process.. unless you're rich. If you're poor, you can go fuck yourself. But, you can get more time any number of ways, including cooking, cleaning, driving, begging.. killing people and stealing their time.. or what Justin Timberlake plans on doing: Robbing the people in control of time itself. He will become the Time Lord.. or the Time Bandit.. hopefully not the Time Cop, though.. that's Jean Claude Van Damme.
Ok, so it's the future. Well.. the near future.. and they won't tell us when exactly, because their year thing was broken and kept spinning upward. Must have been a Microsoft product. One thing you need to know, though.. and that we're informed of.. is that people can live forever! As long as, at the age of 25, you are either blind stinking, dick-achingly wealthy.. or you work ridiculously hard for hours at a time to earn only minutes. If neither is to your liking, have fun dying at age 26. I know what you're thinking: "Hey, isn't this just a complete re-vamping of Logan's Run?" ..also, "Man, I love salted gourmet pretzels!" ..well, stop thinking about pretzels and stop thinking everything is a rip off of everything.. Now.. in this rip off of Robin Hood and Gattaca, Justin Timberlake plays the son of Olivia Wilde. Which makes sense, because if someone as beautiful as Olivia Wilde would have a kid, it would be Justin Timberlake. ..although.. this kind of gives me (and you, too, you damn liar!) some disturbing thoughts. One of which is, "Was this movie being filmed when Justin Timberlake and Andy Samberg wrote 'Motherlover'?" Food for thought.
So they have this shot where Vincent Kartheiser is all, "Hey.. isn't this shocking, in the day and age we're living in, that my Mother-in-Law, my wife, and my daughter are all hot and all the same age.. myeaahhhsss...?" to Justin Timberlake's Will Salas. He, rightfully so, completely ignores the two old hags and focuses all of his attention on the guy's daughter, Sylvia, played by Amanda Seyfried. The trailer explains that time is paid out by doing work. Or, in some cases, isn't paid out at all for doing work, because the future system is unfair and is an allegory for today's work force shenanigans.. or something. This seems like a terrible way for anyone to run a society, and I'm supposing this movie is going to show us in an hour what the writers wouldn't let the fictional government figure out over the course of the past however many years they say has passed whenever they say this movie takes place. (congratulations if you followed that sentence.. I'd like to thank the Academy.) One thing is for sure: Only the Good Die Young.. oh wait.. no, Billy Joel is wrong.. only the poor die young. (That would be a horrible cover song)
The premise rears it's ugly head when some guy who's been living for more than a century (and still has at least a century more), gives Will all of his time left and then kills himself.. which, I guess is redundant, actually. This act of kindness comes with one caveat: Will is told to not "waste" that guy's time. The death of this completely selfish man (yeah, I'm calling him selfish because he was all, "Uhhh.. I'm gonna live forever, uhh.. I hate it.. uhh.. I'm killing myself.. pffft..") sparks an investigation by Cillian Murphy. His task as the Timekeeper (...yeah.. I realize that there is only one Timekeeper, and that is Flava Flav.. but this is Cillian Murphy's official role..) is to figure out why Will Salas has that guy's time. He does corner Will at one point in the middle of a fancy party, but Will escapes violently and kidnaps Amanda Seyfried. While the movie is ripping off 'The Chase' with Charlie Sheen and Kristy Swanson, there is a hint that Amanda Seyfried's Sylvia is some kind of mutant who keeps people alive..simply by being next to them! Blowing right past whatever the hell that meant, the trailer takes a techno turn and Will and Sylvia take it on the run, baby, cause that's the way they want it, baby.. REO Speedwagon aside, they decide to go fuck the whole world upside down and backwards and give out all the time stored up in what I am assuming is called the.. umm.. time.. vaults. Yeah. This, of course, upsets the whole world, and without thinking through his actions, Will has made everyone immortal. I sense problems. This will, no doubt, bring the bad guys of the movie a-runnin' and much action will ensue.
All in all.. after all the name calling.. this movie looks pretty damn sweet. It's got a young, attractive cast and.. screw it, I'm just gonna say it.. I like the fact that Vincent Kartheiser's in this! Have you even seen Masterminds with him and Patrick Stewart?! Woohoooo! This Logan's Run/Robin Hood/The Island thriller sounds pretty cheesy and done on paper, but the trailer does its job and totally psychs me up. I'm gonna wear my, Olivia Wilde Riding A Unicorn Into The Sunset, shirt and check this out ENTHUSIASTICALLY! Fingers Crossed!
Release Date:10/28/2011