completely falls off a cliff

Rating: Null/10 (4 November 2011)

Interesting concept. Time is the new currency. We all live and die by time. Human beings are genetically altered to have stop watches embedded on their arms and each person is given a minimum of 25 years to live. To live past that time you'll have to earn your time by working for it. On top of that you no longer begin to age after you've reached the age of 25. The poor have to work extremely hard to earn their time to live and the rich do not and they have all the time in the world. Transactions are done using the time you have as currency. So a simple cup of coffee could cost 5 mins of time which shortens your life as a result. It's a society where almost everyone works to live. This is more or less the same way we all live our lives. The difference is that we age quicker and our clock is more biological. This film works for about half an hour then it completely falls off a cliff. Timberlake's character Will is a blue collar worker making ends meet in a poor neighbourhood. He runs into a man named Henry, who has over 100 years on his clock. But Henry decides he doesn't want to live forever. He gives Will the 100 years of life he has left and kills himself. Gangsters known as Minute Men find out Will has a hundred years and start pursuing him so they can kill him and take the 100 years for themselves. The authorities also known as Timekeepers are also after Will, thinking he's killed his newly deceased friend Henry. To make matters worse, Will then loses his mother. She dies or times out as it's referred to in the film. Will feeling angered after losing his dear mum (gorgeous Olivia Wilde), plans to avenge her death by going to the rich side of town and stealing all the time he can get his hands on. There he meets Sylvia daughter of some tycoon, she likes him he likes her, coppers find Will. Will takes Sylvia hostage and then Sylvia hates Will for about two minutes until Will gives his sob story about what he's trying to do for his dead mum and the neighbourhood he lives in. Will wins Sylvia over and the two become the Bonnie and Clyde of the future and decide to rebel against the system by stealing all the time from the rich to give to the poor. So you have Bonnie and Clyde meets The Getaway meets Robin Hood with a dash of Equilibrium thrown in. The concept is original, the story however isn't. It's a mess and I had to explain the overall premise in the hope you don't go and see this film. Performances: Timberlake is OK, but he's been better. Social Network, Alpha Dog has shown the man can act when called upon. This was a decent performance at best. At times looking like a rabbit in the headlights when saying dialogue that consists of more than 3 words. Syfried is better and plays a character who displays very little emotion. Sometimes less is more. I was impressed with her. Cillian Murphy as the antagonist Timekeeper does well as does Vincent Kartheiser (Pete Campbell from Mad Men) as Sylvia's father. The rest of the performances, range from bad to terrible. Alex Pettyfer for example is the leader of the Minute Men. He's probably one of the worse villains ever in film. His lines were awful, the character has nothing special about him and on top of that his performance was probably the worst. Hated the way he played the character and hated his performance. Set pieces were filmed well, but the dialogue was awful and unimaginative. Also scenes between Timberlake and Seyfried were tedious and long. Some sort of character development going on there. This film looks like Niccol's futuristic take on America's current economic situation. My head is already hurting from working out how beneficial a referendum would be for Greece. I don't need a similar storyline embedded in this film. It would've been better if Timberlake walked up to the camera holding a placard saying LIFE IS SHORT! Andrew Niccol is a good director. Truman Show and Gattaca are amongst his best work. This looked like something he cared little about. And it's rubbed off on me, because I can't I wasted almost 2 hours of my life on this. I almost timed out watching this. Take my advice, there are only 8/9 more weeks till 2012. Use the rest of your TIME this year wisely, by avoiding this and watching something else instead.