In Time

In Time
Teaser poster
Directed by	Andrew Niccol
Produced by	Andrew Niccol Marc Abraham Amy Israel Kristel Laiblin Eric Newman
Written by	Andrew Niccol
Starring	Amanda Seyfried Justin Timberlake Alex Pettyfer Cillian Murphy
Music by	Craig Armstrong
Cinematography	Roger Deakins
Edited by	Zach Staenberg
Production company	Regency Enterprises New Regency Strike Entertainment
Distributed by	Twentieth Century Fox
Release dates	October 28, 2011 (2011-10-28)
Running time	109 minutes[1]
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$40 million[2]
Box office	$173,930,596[3]

In Time (previously titled Now and I'm.mortal)^[4] is a 2011 American dystopian sci-fi thriller film written, directed, and produced by Andrew Niccol and starring Amanda Seyfried and Justin Timberlake that takes place in a society where people stop aging at 25 and each have a clock on their arms that counts down how long they have to live. The film was released on October 28, 2011.

Plot

In 2169, people are born genetically engineered with a digital clock on their forearm. When they turn 25 years old, they stop aging and their clock begins counting down from one year;^{[Note 1]} when it reaches zero that person "times out" and dies. Time has become the universal currency; it is used to pay for day-to-day expenses and can be transferred between people or capsules. The country has been divided into "time zones" based on the wealth of the population. The movie focuses on two specific zones: Dayton - a poor manufacturing area where people generally have 24 hours or less on their clock at any given time - and New Greenwich - the wealthiest time zone, where people have enough time on their clock to live for centuries.

Will Salas (Justin Timberlake) is a Dayton factory worker who lives with his mother Rachel (Olivia Wilde). One night at a local bar, he saves the drunken and suicidal Henry Hamilton (Matt Bomer) from an attempted robbery by local thief Fortis and his gang. Hamilton, who is 105 years old, reveals to Will that the truth about time wealth is that there is plenty of time for everyone to live a long life. The people of New Greenwich hoard most of the time for themselves in order to live forever, while constantly increasing the cost of living in poorer districts to keep people dying. Hamilton gives a sleeping Will 116 years of his time, leaving himself with 5 minutes. He then sits on a nearby bridge and times out, falling dead into the water. Will awakens to a message from Hamilton not to waste the time he was given, and rushes to the bridge too late to stop the suicide. Raymond Leon, leader of the police-like Timekeepers, leads the investigation into Hamilton's death, and incorrectly assumes that Will robbed and killed Hamilton.

Will visits his best friend Borel and shares ten years with him, one for each year of their friendship. Will tells Borel that he is going to use the time to move with his mom to New Greenwich. Meanwhile, Rachel uses all but 90 minutes of her time to make a loan payment and finds herself short for bus fare to get home. The uncaring driver forces her to run back to Dayton, but she arrives a few seconds too late for Will to save her and times out in his arms. Will decides to call a car service and head to New Greenwich, where he spends his first night in a suite at a hotel. The next day, he meets time-loaning businessman Philippe Weis and his daughter Sylvia at a local casino. While playing poker with Weis, Will bets all of his time and wins 1,100 years in the hand. Afterward, Sylvia invites him to a party in the Weis mansion. Will buys a mid-1960's Jaguar XK-E and drives himself to the party, where the Timekeepers quickly apprehend him. Raymond confiscates all but two hours of Will's time, but Will manages to escape with Sylvia as hostage. En route to Dayton they are ambushed by Fortis and his gang, who take all but thirty minutes of their time. Will attempts to get some time back from Borel, but learns that he used his time to drink himself to death. Sylvia is forced to pawn some jewelry to get time, and Will calls her father to demand a 1,000 year ransom for her. Weis refuses to pay, and Will decides to release Sylvia. She calls her father from a pay phone, but they are ambushed by Raymond, whom Sylvia shoots by accident.

Will and Sylvia decide to team up and begin robbing her father's time banks. A ten-year reward is offered for their capture, which leads Fortis and his gang to hunt them down in a local hotel room. Will shoots the rest of the gang and escapes with Sylvia, after killing Fortis by winning a duel to the death. They realize they cannot steal enough time to effectively change things, as New Greenwich simply raises prices to compensate. They decide on a big score and rob her father's personal vault for one million years. Raymond chases them back to Dayton, but is too late to stop them from distributing the stolen time to the poor. Raymond chases them to the outskirts of the city where he times out, having forgotten to collect his daily time allotment. Will and Sylvia, each with just over a minute to live, race to Raymond's patrol car and Will collects Raymond 's daily pay. In a scene reminiscent of his mother's death, Will and Sylvia run toward each other with seconds left; this time, he makes it in time to save her.

TV reports show factories in Dayton shutting down as everyone has enough time and abandons their jobs to go to New Greenwich. Will and Sylvia continue robbing banks as part of their efforts to crash the system, while the rich attempt to cope with the sudden surge of people infiltrating their zone.

Plot holes

In the first part of the film Will and his best friend Borel act as though they cannot access "capsules" to store time in. Will and Sylvia are wanted by police yet they are able to travel through all time zones undetected in order to kidnap Weiss. Weiss has partied with Will, yet does not recognise Will when he wears sunglasses and pretends to be Weiss's body guard. Banks are strangely easy to rob, despite the desperation of the time poor to prevent their deaths by increasing the amount of time they have stored in their wrists.

Cast

Production

On July 12, 2010, it was reported that Amanda Seyfried had been offered a lead role.^[5] On July 27, 2010, it was confirmed that Justin Timberlake had been offered a lead role.^[6] On August 9, 2010, Cillian Murphy was confirmed to have joined the cast.^[7]

The first photos from the set were revealed on October 28, 2010.^[8] 20th Century Fox and New Regency distributed the film, and Marc Abraham and Eric Newman's Strike Entertainment produced it.^[9]

In an interview with Kristopher Tapley of InContention.com Roger Deakins stated that he would be shooting the film in digital, which makes this the first film to be shot in digital by the veteran cinematographer.^[10]

The Dayton scenes were filmed primarily in the Skid Row and Boyle Heights neighborhoods of Los Angeles, while the New Greenwich scenes were filmed primarily in Century City, Bel Air, and Malibu. Although the names of the ghetto-like zone and wealthy enclave reflect Dayton and Greenwich, respectively, the maps used by the Timekeepers are maps of Los Angeles, CA.

Using the common device of Future-Retro, the production's vehicle suppliers assembled a fleet of cars and trucks from used car lots and junkyards. Although an ancient Citroën DS 21 and Cadillac Seville feature, center stage goes to a fleet of seemingly immaculate Dodge Challengers and Lincoln Continentals. The rich drive around in the high gloss Lincolns, all of which have been smoothed, lowered and fitted with over-sized disc wheels on low profile rubber. The Dodges are the Time Keeper's cop cars. These too have been smoothed and externally customized, with grilles front and rear covering the lights, and low profile tires on disc wheels. In stark contrast to the Lincolns, paintwork is matte black. A slim police light-bar is fitted internally, behind the windshield. Externally this fleet looked immaculate but no money was spent on what would not be seen and many of the vehicles had wrecked interiors, with ripped seats, carpets and head-linings. Because the cars had been assembled from many sources and prepared to look identical, the interiors of most were of a color which did not match the black exteriors. The best of the Lincoln Continentals, for instance, whose interior is seen in the production, is trimmed out in blue.

The use of future retro is one of many elements that the film seems to share with Niccol's earlier work, Gattaca. The earlier work also features electrically powered vintage cars (notably a Rover P6 and again, a Citroën DS), as well as buildings of indeterminate age. Gattaca also deals with innate inequalities (though in its case genetic, rather than longevity) and the film's protagonist also seeks to cross the divide that his birthright is supposed to deny him. Similarly, he is pursued by law enforcement officers after being wrongly identified as having committed a murder.

Copyright lawsuit

On September 15, 2011, according to The Hollywood Reporter, a suit was filed by attorneys on behalf of speculative fiction writer Harlan Ellison that the film's plot was based on his award-winning 1965 short story "‍ '​Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman".

The suit, naming New Regency and director Andrew Niccol as well as a number of anonymous John Does, appears to base its claim on the similarity that both the completed film along with Ellison's story concern a dystopian future in which people have a set amount of time to live which can be revoked, given certain pertaining circumstances by a recognized authority known as a Timekeeper. Initially, the suit demanded an injunction against the film's release;^[11] however, Ellison later altered his suit to instead ask for screen credit^[12] before ultimately dropping the suit, with both sides releasing the following joint statement: "After seeing the film In Time, Harlan Ellison decided to voluntarily dismiss the Action. No payment or screen credit was promised or given to Harlan Ellison. The parties wish each other well, and have no further comment on the matter."^[13]

Similar works

A very early instance of a storyline with time as currency occurs in "Mandrake and the Goldman", a Lee Falk comic issue based on the popular Mandrake the Magician character, and published in India in the year 1972.^[14] It is possible that the original US publication of this comic happened before publication of the Harlan Ellison short story.

A short story entitled Time is Money, by Lee Falk (the creator of the comic strip Mandrake the Magician), appeared in the December 1975 issue of Playboy.^[15] It portrays a society that includes many of the elements later used by In Time, a society in which time is the currency for its inhabitants and when someone runs out of time, he dies on the spot. It includes a timekeeper implanted in the body, time banks, transactions by handshakes, no aging, and social class differences according to accumulated time.

Many of the elements of In Time can be found in the 1987 short film The Price of Life,^[16] made by Chanticleer Films. Its basic premise and storyline are so similar that In Time has been called an unacknowledged remake of the earlier film.^[17] The Price of Life was a 38-minute short film (story by Stephen Tolkin and Michel Monteaux) in which a time account is physically linked to every infant at birth, with death automatic when the balance drops to zero. An elite upper-class is portrayed as living hundreds of years or more. The protagonist is given a certain amount of time as an infant, and as young boy adds days and years to his time account by buying valuables from people and selling them to visiting tourists from the rich enclave. After his sister dies after gambling away her time, the protagonist (now a young man) sets out on a journey to the enclave of "the Old Ones" in order to save the life of his mother, who is (literally) running out of time. He gets there and meets a beautiful older woman who co-opts him into the immortal lifestyle.

A similar theme recurs in Hannu Rajaniemi's novel The Quantum Thief. The concept of saving time as a tangible asset also occurs in Michael Ende's fantasy novel Momo.

Reception

The film received generally mixed reviews from critics, with praise over the originality and cast performances, but had criticism for the lack of character development; review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 36% of 152 critics gave the movie a positive review, with a rating average of 5.2 out of 10. The website's consensus reads, "In Time‍ '​s intriguing premise and appealing cast are easily overpowered by the blunt, heavy-handed storytelling."^[18] Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, gives the film a score of 53 based on 36 reviews.^[19] CinemaScore polls reported that the average grade moviegoers gave the film was a "B-minus" on an A+ to F scale.^[20] Roger Ebert gave the film a positive review with 3 stars out of 4, noting that the "premise is damnably intriguing", but "a great deal of this film has been assembled from standard elements".^[21]

Notes

References

External links

• Official website
• In Time at the Internet Movie Database
• In Time at AllMovie
• In Time at Box Office Mojo
• In Time at Rotten Tomatoes
• In Time at Metacritic
• Official Trailer

Andrew Niccol filmography Director/writer Gattaca (1997) Simone (2002) Lord of War (2005) In Time (2011) The Host (2013) Good Kill (2014) Writer only The Truman Show (1998) The Terminal (2004)

Marc Abraham Producer A Thousand Acres (1997) Playing God (1997) Trippin' (1999) The Family Man (2000) Bring It On (2000) Spy Game (2001) The Emperor's Club (2002) Tuck Everlasting (2002) The Rundown (2003) Dawn of the Dead (2004) Children of Men (2006) Let's Go to Prison (2006) Flash of Genius (2007) The Last Exorcism (2009) In Time (2011) The Thing (2011) The Man with the Iron Fists (2012) The Last Exorcism Part II (2013) RoboCop (2014) The Man with the Iron Fists 2 (2014) Director Flash of Genius (2008) I Saw the Light (2015) Related Eric Newman Strike Entertainment Beacon Pictures