Fun witty romp with action beats

Rating: 7/10 (6 May 2012)

When I first saw the trailer for this movie, I thought to myself "this looks kinda neat, I think I'll enjoy it." So after that I promptly stopped watching any trailers for it and avoided all news media concerning it. Didn't even look on IMDb for the filmography. Yes, I review movies and remained willfully ignorant of as many of the pertinent details of the film as possible. Why you might ask? It's simple really, when I saw TRON, it was the same deal: I avoided being saturated by news media about the film like some of my friends and was thus able to enjoy the movie more than they did. I was actually really excited when Daft Punk showed up because I had no idea they were going to be in the movie.
Anyhow, what's this movie about? The simplest and fastest explanation is this: it's a dystopian future where time is quite literally money, and life. Everyone has been techno-organically wired with clocks that keep time, which they use as currency to purchase everything and also determines how long they will live. One of the side effects of the process is that no one ages past 25, which does make things kinda funny since you have no idea how old anyone really is.
When I started writing this review, I finally looked up the filmography and found out that the movie was directed by none other than Andrew Niccol. Now this name probably doesn't mean anything to you and I don't blame you if that's the case. However, Andrew directed at least one film that is very near and dear to my heart called Gattaca, which is a terrific sci-fi gem from that 90's that quite frankly deserves a review of its own even now (at least I know what my next review will be). Oh yeah, he also directed the Truman Show if you liked that, I thought it was interesting at any rate.
The two thing about Gattaca were that it didn't get a lot of attention at the time it came out and still doesn't have the kind of recognition I think it really deserves, the other thing was that it really got across an important message about bio-ethics without being heavy handed and preachy. This is reflected somewhat with In Time, where the message is about wealth and class. I feel it has some similarities to brave new world, but feel free to disagree.
So, the review proper: the acting is pretty good and the writing is solid enough for most discerning palettes I think. I've never really hated on Justin Timberlake too much, but I have to admit I was a bit incredulous about his skills as an actor until this realization dawned on me: he was able to fool entire hordes of teens into thinking his work was legitimate music for years; the man has definite experience in suspending disbelief. But seriously, he's a really solid lead in this and Amanda Seyfried is no slouch either (the fact that she's really hot doesn't hurt either). The action is not as intense as I would have liked, but it is serviceable and Timberlake's tongue-in-cheek attitude towards a lot of what happens is actually rather refreshing when compared with the usual smug self assured or dark archetypes of most action leads.
Final analysis: this movie is interesting and somewhat compelling, go see it and if you don't feel like there's an interesting message, just sit back and enjoy the eye candy anyway.