In Time (2011)

There's an awful lot to like about Andrew Niccol's 2011 film "In Time", starring Justin Timberlake, Cillian Murphy and Amanda Seyfried. So much in fact that it's a real shame that overall it is simply good, rather than great.

Set in an alternative reality where time is currency and a missed quota at work is likely to be fatal, Timberake's Will Salas lives day to day, scraping by on work in a factory and putting up with an ever rising cost of living. One advantage (for the film makers at least) is that everyone stops aging once they hit 25, remaining young and fit for as long as they can keep the clock on their wrists ticking.

Will's hard fought existence is turned upside down by 24 hours in which he is gifted a century of time by a man who has lived longer than Will could imagine and has run out of reasons to go on. He also offers an explanation that the rich live for as long as they want in other districts of the sprawling city, happy to let the poor live, work and die while they party and enjoy near immortality.

After tragedy befalls Will he decides to use this new gift of time to attack the system from within, buying his way into high society life. Once in however the film shifts from a potentially very interesting political debate dressed up in science fiction trappings to a more generic, though well done, action thriller with car chases, shoot outs and dramatic make out sections. Will and his new flame Sylvia, a bored daughter of an extremely wealthy socialite, begin to attempt to redistribute the time, all the while pursued by a relentless 'Timekeeper' (the consistently impressive Cillian Murphy) and discovering the lengths people will go to protect a system they've rigged to benefit them.

It is sci-fi for the Occupy age, a barely veiled rant against the injustices of the capitalist system and it is the political subtext to the film, where it occasionally stumbles. By trying to argue through Seyfried's character Sylvia, that the rich live empty, unhappy lives and are in some ways jealous of the poor, the writer and director Andrew Niccol probably aimed to show how the system makes everyone suffer to some degree. Instead it presents the viewer with the choice of either Sylvia being a spoilt rich girl more interested in the excitement and danger than the cause, or the borderline immortal wealthy actually being almost pitiable, so greedy they make themselves miserable. The moral ambiguity may be deliberate, but if so it needed to be handled with a more skilled hand, as too many characters flit between unrepentantly evil and trapped by a system.

The worst culprit for the uncertain and under developed political message of the film is Murphy's detective/timekeeper Raymond Leon. This character has the potential to be more complex than any other, a potential bridge between the two elements of society, with a past and moral code that is hinted at but never fully explored and that is a shame, because there was potential in him. 

The political aspect is also slightly flawed in that their is effectively no explanation given as to what the alternative is in this reality, where an early death is near inevitable for all but those born into wealth. The decision to redistribute the time is undoubtedly born out of noble intent, but Will does not take on a role of leadership or present a new plan. Perhaps Niccol was happy to settle for the worthy message of self-determination and there is nothing wrong with that, but when I (a sci-fi loving borderline socialist) sit down to a film that focuses on the issues of rampant capitalism and the brutal realities of class inequality, I hope for a more complex take on it than the rich are bad and the poor trapped and doomed.

Now these are very subjective criticisms, ones that will bug me far more than they may others, but all good science fiction is judged on how it uses an alternate or future reality to challenge the issues of the present and with "In Time", Niccol touched upon some fascinating questions without ever really coming close to answering them.

For a moment taking away the politics, it must also be said that while good, none of the action sequences are all that remarkable and some elements of the script are also a little laboured.

However as I said in the introduction, this is a good film, with the majority of my complaints stemming more from what it could have been than what it is. There are some great elements to this dystopian take on Robin Hood, with a terrifying take on arm wrestling and a very literal version of gambling your life away.

The film is accompanied by an engaging score from Craig Armstrong ('Love Actually' and 'Moulin Rouge') which in places is reminiscent of one of my favourite film scores, that of Danny Boyle's 'Sunshine', composed by his regular collaborator, John Murphy.

Go in expecting a dramatic thriller with solid performances from Timberlake (he's making a habit of this now, would not have expected that a few years ago) and Seyfried and an agreeable if simplistic message then you will probably be pleased with what you see.

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A promising concept coupled with a well executed action thriller provide an entertaining, if occasionally underwhelming experience.


7/10

My Favourite Films (6/15) - Science Fiction

Favourite Science Fiction Film - Monsters (Edwards, 2010)

Sci-fi for me falls into two different categories really; cowboys and Indians in space and what, for lack of a better definition, I’ll call thinking sci-fi. What I mean by that is that some sci-fi aims merely to entertain and as I’ve said before and will say again, there is nothing wrong with that, while others look to combine entertainment with subtler, bigger considerations.

The first decision I had to make was whether my favourite sci-fi film was going to come from the former or the latter and in the end, despite some very strong contenders from the purely entertainment group (‘Star Wars’, the most recent ‘Star Trek’ and ‘Aliens’ all sprang to mind) I had to go for the slightly more challenging end.

That was only half the decision though because following that I had to try and decide between an even stronger selection of films. It was tempting to go for Ridley Scott’s 1979 classic ‘Alien’, Christopher Nolan’s complex epic ‘Inception’ or very temptingly the Duncan Jones directed ‘Moon’. All three are examples of what great sci-fi can be like, but in the end I decided to go for one of my favourite films of the past year, a film I’ve written about in this blog a number of times, the low budget, Gareth Edwards aliens and romance flick ‘Monsters’.

‘Monsters’ is undoubtedly a sci-fi film, it’s set in a world where Aliens have been living in a quarantined area of Northern Mexico for 6 years, The U.S and Mexican armies are attempting to control the spread but are unable to get rid of them. There are questions about whether the aliens are aggressors or innocent herd creatures, whether the military action is making matters better or worse and whether there will be a chance for things to go back to the way they were.

What makes ‘Monsters’ a great film though is the elements that have absolutely nothing to do with science fiction. At its core ‘Monsters’ is a story of romance born out of hardship, filmed like a nature documentary and including surprisingly few glances of the aliens themselves. It’s that which makes it such an entertaining film, it’s a sci-fi where the aliens are more a narrative device than a central issue.

The best science fiction looks to question how humanity reacts to extraordinary, unnatural or futuristic scenarios, asks questions about humans as we are now by looking at how we could be in some far distant future or dramatically different present.

That’s what ‘Monsters’ does to great effect; it is in effect a testament to the idea that no matter how bad life could get, no matter how screwed up a situation might be, humans will keep falling in love with each other and keep finding the inherent good in each other regardless.

Considering how small the budget was reported to be, $800,000, the aliens are well realised; giant creatures that seem to combine the biology of elephants and octopus’, making a nice change from the grey or green humanoid options and they came to earth as spores on an asteroid not in battle ships hell bent on humanity’s destruction. Scary, animalistic and in their own bizarre way hauntingly beautiful, the aliens are dramatically different to the creatures that make up the majority of aliens in cinematic history.

It’s a film that shows just how good intelligent, subtle science fiction can be when directors are given the chance to create something more lasting and complex than sci-fi is often given credit for.

The song today is off the new Frank Turner album to celebrate it's release today.

They Came From Outer Space.....

This post is basically what I wrote in my journalism workshop this morning, with a few embellishments. We were tasked with writing an article for a magazine of our choice, so I chose to write one for Empire.

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This winter Aliens are arriving on our screens in huge numbers and in all shapes and sizes.

The end of 2010 and the beginning of 2011 are packed with the resurgence of the alien invasion genre. Our cities will be attacked relentlessly, famous landmarks will be blown up repeatedly and it will seem that all hope is lost on a monthly basis.

The genre has never truly gone away, mostly because people’s interest in things from outer space, and the likelihood that they would want to destroy us in a fiery apocalypse, seems certain to remain strong until the day extra-terrestrial life actually turns up on our doorstep, at which point rolling 24 hour news coverage will take over and provide us with a real life version.

This winter however definitely sees a surge of films that would fit within this bracket, though it has to be said, there’s an exciting variety in what’s arriving.

First to make it to earth is ‘Skyline’, a sci-fi adventure focussing on a predictably small and rag-tag group of people trying to escape a devastating alien invasion by heading out of the city, in this case Los Angeles.

Directors Colin & Greg Strause (Alien V Predator Requiem) have produced a generic but visually impressive thriller that has been met with a fairly dismissive critical reaction. Joe Leydon, writing for Variety magazine described it as: “Imagine a budget mash up of ‘Transformers’ and ‘Independence Day’ and you’re primed for skyline.” By all accounts the film suffers from it's familiarity, it's a perfectly well made film, but we've seen it all before. It lacks the set pieces of 'Independence Day', the grimly apocalyptic quality of 'War of the Worlds' or the charm of a 'Doctor Who' episode.

Following close on it’s heels is a completely different kind of beast. ‘Monsters’, released on the 3^rd of December, is as it’s director Gareth Edwards described it to The Guardian newspaper: “A road movie set in a world with giant monsters.”

It’s an accurate summation of a film which constantly places it’s focus upon the two central human characters, a cynical journalist and the shaken tourist he is escorting, and their physical and emotional journey rather than the ‘Aliens’ which inhabit the land.

In ‘Monsters’ the aliens have been on earth for 6 years, quarantined in an area between Mexico and the U.S, which as you may have guessed, the two main characters (played brilliantly by Whitney Able and Scoot McNairy) are forced to travel through.

Made for around $200,000, a relative shoe-string budget in this genre, the film has gained critical acclaim, Mark Adams from Screen International referring to it as: “An intelligent sci-fi film that is absorbing, thrilling and ultimately moving.”

2011 will see several more alien based movies. One of the most hotly anticipated is ‘Battle: Los Angeles’ a big budget action film whose trailer seems to promise a cross between ‘Black Hawk Down’ and ‘Cloverfield’. The $100m production shows one squad of U.S marines attempting to fight back against the Alien invasion. It’s a refreshingly different take to actually see the battle from the point of view of individual soldiers (including Aaron Eckhart an Michelle Rodriguez) rather than government chiefs, top scientists or terrified civilians. My fingers are crossed for this because the trailer looks so promising.

With ‘Paul’ (Simon Pegg and Nick Frost’s comedy road movie about an encounter with a friendly alien), ‘Cowboys and Aliens’ (Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford fighting off aliens in the Wild West) and ‘I am Number Four’ (an action movie aimed at the teen audience soon to be available with the conclusion of the Harry Potter and Twilight sagas, with Alex Pettyfer in the central role) all due for release in 2011 it would appear the aliens aren’t planning on leaving anytime soon.