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Rating: 5/10 (1 February 2012)

From the Director of sci-fi classic, Gattaca(1997), and The Truman Show(1998), Andrew Niccol creates a unique story about a world where everyone is genetically engineered to live only a year after their 25th birthday. Although the government controls the population, there is a way to live past 25. The way to do this is to do whatever you can to get enough currency to continue to live past that final year. What this does, is it creates a survival of the fittest, and only the strongest and smartest who can obtain enough currency to survive, leaving the weaker to stop living. Time has become the new currency, and if you become wealthy enough, you can theoretically become immortal. Niccol wrote a wonderful story, with an underlying tone of today's government, and how banks in our society today have way to much control and power, and ultimately credit is what has driven us to such lows. We live in a world where money controls everything, and if you have enough money, you can only get richer. I can definitely see this film becoming the topic of many essays in film classes, economic classes, and probably even some government courses. The film has a many messages throughout, for us to learn from.
Although some might say that the casting choices were not the best in the film, I believe that Justin Timberlake did a perfect job playing the main role in this film. He showed that he is worthy of playing serious roles, when he played Frankie in Alhpa Dog(2006), and he did a good job in Southland Tales(2006) as well. After seeing both of those movies, I figured he would be great in this film, and to my surprise he actually is improving; he has come a long way from the lead singer in Nsync. Another great actor is Cillian Murphy, who is what the film calls "timekeepers". He is in charge of making sure that all time is accounted for, and that no illegal time trading is going on. Although for me, Murphy always plays great villains, he does a good job of bringing his eeriness he has, and blends it well with this role.
My biggest problem with the film was the use of the word immortal. There were a couple points in the film where a few characters had the chance to kill someone over how much time they had on their arm. The rich people with centuries on their arm, claim to be immortal and even tend to flaunt the fact that they are immortal. This makes no sense because the time on their arm, is simply how much time they have until their heart stops. That time has nothing do with the fact that you can still die from a stab wound, gunshot, etc. Everyone in the film is trying to get more time on their arm so they can feel immortal, but they can never be immortal, they are still human. Maybe I'm missing something here, but the scene where Will is holding the gun to Mr. Weis head, and he saying how he is immortal, Will should have just shot him right there, proving he is not immortal. I guess that was just the way the film shows that the rich people who had all the time in the world, were really blinded by the time on their arm. I guess they did this to compare to our society, where we are blinded by money constantly, when in reality we should just enjoy our daily lives, and not have to worry about money so much. Also the ending to me felt a little rushed, and seemed like nothing really got resolved. I don't want to spoil the ending here, but I feel like they could have come up with something a little more clever.
All in all, In Time is a fun sci-fi film that does not involve much thinking to watch. Still a great film to watch at least once, and I'll probably watch it again sometime down the road. If your on the fence about watching In Time, just give it a shot, its not to long either, just over 90 minutes, but I will say that this is not up to par with Niccol's other movies like The Truman Show(1998), or Gattaca(1997), in my opinion.
Rating: 5/10