Great Idea....needed more money.

Rating: 6/10 (28 October 2011)

In this age of Producers and Directors finding old stories, and re-done stories, and anything and everything under the sun that already has an audience, it was nice to go to the movie theater and gamble with my money for once. I think Woody Allen once put it in one of his scripts, when he has Joe Mantegna utter, "Tom "so-and-so", HUGE star...he's in town doing a sequel of an adaptation of a remake." And, then we get to the real and very delightful fact that there are STILL great minds in Hollywood that can give us something new to look at, and something else to hold our imagination while they dump a load of Social Drama all over us, and take another social engineering, soap-box position, even when that position (contrary to how Hollywood normally does it) stands in direct, middle finger up, f-you status. No 'smuggled' messages here.
IN this FILM. TIME is MONEY. Literally.
Everyone pays for everything with time, and time is what they earn when they work and even when they gamble. And, it is all recorded in a glowing bank account right on your arm, with checks and balances constantly shifting to the whims of whatever events bring about the next turning point in the film.
I was surprised about just how intelligent and able Timberlake has become as an actor. This film is basically a movie for teenagers, but there is some of that Penny Marshall, Tom Hanks "Big" type wisdom in this film, and I think in the hands of a better screenwriter and art director, this could have been as big of a movie franchise as the Matrix, and the jury is still out on that. The story left much to be desired, because most of it was cliché. But, I couldn't help soaking up this new world, which was funny, because there wasn't much IN IT. No lavish sets. All the cars appeared to be the same, except for JTs sequence with a James Bond car, and there was a lot of kissing in the film, which we don't see that much anymore, and not quite in this way. Amanda Seyfried was, eh, so-so, and Vincent Kartheiser and Cillian Murphy proved yet again WHY they are actors working in Hollywood: They sell the role. See it, but don't get too hung up on it. It is a movie that could have done so much more in the hands of the right Producer, and still, it made it out to the audience.