Lola and Clyde playing Robin Hood

Rating: Null/10 (28 October 2011)

The best case of a young-looking old mother is in Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe where the titular character, being a fairy, looks "a maid of seventeen" where she is in fact a 200-year-old mother of the hero. For looks, however, you can never beat Olivia Wilde who in this movie plays a 50-year-old mother to Will Salas (Justin Timberlake).
The rather ingenious plot perimeters of this science fiction are lucidly explained at the outset so that unlike in many other movies in this genre, the audience's mind is not led through a maze of twists and turns but rather left free to enjoy the story and action. Unexplained details are unimportant, and the clever souls labouring to pick plot holes are wasting their time and money.
It goes like this. In this brave new world everybody looks 25-years-old (and therefore Wilde can appear as gorgeous as she always is) although they may have already lived for a long, long time. The important thing is not how much time they have already had but how much is left, and this is clearly marked on your wrist in glowing digital numbers, which can in theory range from a million years (or more) to one second. The clock keeps running and when it shows zero, you drop dead. Nice and simple, isn't it?
But there's more and that's where the ingenuity comes in. Time serves a dual purpose, the other being the medium of exchange, i.e. currency. When you buy a burger at a fast food chain, you put your wrist against a device (they're all over the place) and they charge (i.e. take away from you) 6 days (or whatever). When you press your wrist against somebody else's, you are transferring time (which way it goes depends on which has the upper hand, literally). Again, nice and simple? But if you put the two together and ponder for a second, you see the ingenuity. Never in any fiction is poverty and death so closely linked – not through things like starvation or illness, but instant death when your clock winds down to zero. In the poor district in the movie, most people carry only a day or two's remaining time on their wrists and have to labour to refill it, or die. Never is "living from day to day" more literal. In one poker scene, the hero bets all he has, and watches his clock run down to 3, 2then 1 second when his life is saved in the nick of time when 100 years start pouring in upon his win.
Against this backdrop, however, is a familiar story.nay, several familiar stories. In essence, it starts as kidnapping a rich girl for ransom, continues through a predictable Stockholm Syndrome and ends up with Bonnie and Clyde playing Robin Hood. In form, it's "Run Lola Run" (1998) and it's an amazing sight to see rich girl Sylvia Weis (Amanda Seyfried) running in, what, 5-inch heels every 15 minutes throughout the movie. Here, she does not run alone though but with her dashingly handsome beau.
As the word "chemistry" has been so overused, let me just say that Timberlake and Seyfried look really well together (despite some disparity in height, hence perhaps the heels, even in running). The audience should well remember how with dashing charm and cocksure confidence Timberlake nailed the character flamboyant Sean Parker in "The social network" (2010). Seyfried moved on from sweet innocent Sophie in "Mama Mia" (2008) to challenging roles as titular "Chloe" (2009). They will both go far.
The other highlight in casting is Callian Murphy who, for movie lovers, needs no introduction. His character here as a "Timekeeper" is often misunderstood to be a villain. It has in fact been depicted sympathetically: a law enforcer who blindly follows his orders and living, unlike the poor, in a day-to-day existence through his daily "per diem". Reminds me of Javert in "Les Miserables".