Movie review: In Time ***

Stars: Justin Timberlake, Amanda Seyfried, Cillian Murphy, Vincent Kartheiser
Director: Andrew Niccol
Rated: PG-13
Showing: Neptune Cinema week of Friday, November 4. For more information call 292-7296.
Tickets: Buy tickets online
Runtime: 109 minutes
Sci-fi/action

Gattaca director Andrew Niccol's sense of the zeitgeist is as on the money as ever with In Time, a sci-fi parable that plays like Occupy Wall Street: The Movie.

Though its action beats and story arc are nothing if not conventional, this startling commentary on a world of haves and those-we'll-keep-from-having touches on the greatest sci-fi trope of all - dystopia, how the future looks because of the things we do wrong today.

Justin Timberlake is Will Salas, a young guy who will be "25" to the end of his days. Or hours. In this future, people stop aging at 25. Then, unless they can buy, borrow or steal time from another, they die.

"I don't have time" has a whole new meaning to the working poor. They sprint, breathlessly, from home to work to date night and constantly stare at the luminescent digits counting down on their arms. Time, for all of them, is running out.

The gangs that rule the place are "Minutemen," thieves who steal from others, kill at will and drive cool retro cars. Portis, given a nicely petulant taste by Alex Pettyfer, is leader of the pack.

The rich, barricaded in their own fortress "time zones," stockpile the years, live spectacularly well and spectacularly long. But they live without risk, in fear of the one thing that can get them - accidental death.

But an act of kindness earns Will time - enough of it to change time zones. He goes undercover and resolves to live it up and take the rich for everything they've got. That's where he gambles with the rich guy (Mad Men's Vincent Kartheiser). That's where he meets the rich man's stunning, rebellious daughter, Sylvia (Amanda Seyfried). And that's where he runs afoul of the timekeepers, led by the obsessed Javert-like maintainer of the status quo, Ray Leon (Cillian Murphy, terrific).

Timberlake is more adequate than epic in this leading man turn, and Seyfried, in a red flapper's bob, impossibly high heels and provocatively short skirts, still seems an innocent young thing playing at being bad. But she's good at suggesting a woman bored with a life where she doesn't dare so much as take a dip in the ocean behind the mansion she grew up in.

Writer-director Niccol manages to cover the same ground as the most recent Spy Kids movie without tumbling into silliness. But In Time still has its silly side, its eye-rolling moments mixed in with the pungent observations about modern society.

In Time is more a potentially great parable than a particularly good one. The earliest scenes, where Will meets a rich man tired of his excess years, are preachy. When Will and Sylvia go on the lam, the film gets a needed jolt of adrenalin. It's a pity Niccol's script doesn't give them anywhere to go.