Time is of the essence

TIMBERLAKE. Amazing concept.

Justin Timberlake’s current starrer, “In Time,” is a fun film to think about, but not necessarily or not always to view. What does that mean? Basically, the futuristic film comes off better as an intriguing and even brilliant concept than as a fully fleshed-out production. The execution is sometimes not imaginative or empathetic enough, is why.

But, it really is a lulu of a concept: Imagine a world not too far into the future from now, where medical science has become so advanced that it has practically canceled out death, except for dying in accidents and as a victim of crimes and other violent acts?

So, if practically everybody can live just about forever, what kind of world can we look forward to inhabiting? An SRO planet is what, so that would never do.

Private jet

Enter now the far-out system that enables everybody to live for only 25 years, and then to expire—unless you can buy more time! That’s right, money has been replaced by time as the key unit of trade and you can purchase anything, from a cup of coffee to a private jet, by reducing the appropriate number of minutes, months or years you have left, to effect a particular “barter” transaction.

In that universe, the really rich can live practically forever, even as the “time-poor” drop like flies around them. The wealthiest people of all are the owners of “time rental” conglomerates that charge a high interest rate for borrowers to live for just a few more days or months.

It’s a terribly unjust and cruel system, and Timberlake’s character knows how terrible it is, first-hand, because his mother, after “living young” for 50 years, runs out of time and dies a second too soon, before he can extend her life again.

So, Timberlake vows to avenge himself and lick the system itself, by kidnapping  the daughter of one of the richest men in the land. While doing so, he succeeds in subverting her beliefs and shaking up the system’s carefully constructed house of cards, until its very existence is threatened. Wow.

Unfortunately, the way this amazing concept is parsed out in terms of character and plot development, it too falls like a house of bad-luck cards. Timberlake keeps foiling the system’s army of praetorian guards and “time-keepers” (as opposed to the peace-keepers), so his success and exploits become too good to be true, and believing in them enough to empathize with the film action becomes an implausibility—an impossibility, even.

If the system’s bosses were so stupid and helpless in the face of the ace subversive’s one-man army, how could they ever have put such a complicated system in place—?!

Sense of logic

However, if you check in your sense of logic and actuality before entering the moviehouse, watching “In Time” could give you a whale of a good time. In addition, the film makes you respect and value the time you have left in your own existence a whole lot, because you know that you can’t buy more of it.

In this film, and in real life itself, time really is of the essence, and worth much more than its weight in gold. So, “spend” it with great care and good judgment!

Before it’s too late.