Out of Time

So, in usual style I've struggled to find anything to write about recently. While various ideas have come and gone (a Defense of Politicians, Walking in Test Match Cricket, Education Education Education), I'm going to revert back to more or less where this blog started - reviews.  I just finished watching the movie "In Time", and, as expected, it wasn't that good. However, it is a prime example of a film which 'could' have done some very interesting things...

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A good sci-fi film needs a good premise. This is where we (the audience) buy into the rules of the internal universe. The Premise needs to set out what, in this world, the characters can, and can't do, and what their motivations and cultural norms are.

"In Time's" Premise is that Money = Time has actually been made true. You buy things with time, you get paid in Time, and, barring violent intervention, you die when you run out of time.

Herein is our first problem. Where does the Time come from in the first place? In the modern world money comes from two sources, firstly the banks conjure it out of thin air by fractional reserve banking, and secondly governments (or central banks) print it. As long as the amount of actual money roughly matches up with the value people place on the goods and services in the economy everything is fine (and if its out of sync slightly you get inflation or deflation). However... if Time = Money how does this work? Unfortunately the film doesn't ever give us an answer to this question, and even less so about how the super rich have accumulated their millions of stored years.

(A second point here - because everyone's personal Time is ticking down all the (pardon the word) time the economy is constantly losing value. This is comparable to you only being able to use money once before it lost value - pretty soon you'd run out of money).

In-universe the time=money premise also generates problems. It costs 2 hours to buy bus ride that covers a 2 hour walk. Why would I pay for the bus?? If the bus ride lasts 20 minutes then taking the bus costs me 2 hours 20 minutes, and walking costs me 20 minutes less. In a very real way (in this setting) taking the bus brings me 20 minutes nearer to death then walking does.

Next problem in the premise is how you transfer time (apparently you just hold hands with people and 'will'?? it to happen) - this is just way to easy to exploit. Probably a useful plot mechanic, but would seem to make sleeping borderline suicide unless your in a triple locked room with someone you really trust pointing a shotgun at the door. 

Character-wise we also have some problems. The central character is a factory worker who also happens to be a pro-wrestling champion, pro-poker player, crack-shot with a gun, special agent level evasive driver and Olympic long distance runner. He also managed to acquire all of these skills while working 2 shifts a day in a factory to earn 4 hours to keep his mother alive. Again the question how arises...  There are few things more annoying in films then central characters who acquire miracle level skill-sets with no real explanation.

I'm not even going to mention the scene where the limo survives four vans worth of guys open up on it with machine guns, suffering nothing more than some scratched windows.

Ideas

What then, could have been done better? What scenes flirted with brilliance and then damp squipped?

Where Time comes from - this should have been answered, or at least hinted at.How about a nice dystopian view that the government really can just create Time? But since not everyone can live for ever (population, resources etc) then the world is broken down into tiers. The inner tier of Immortals really are just that, and can create Time out of nowhere. The tiers then filter down - the 'party' magnates, and super-officials who deal in millions of years, the national leaders, and so on all the way down to the plebs. You get your 25 years, plus whatever the next tier up decide to pass on in exchange for goods and services and then you die. And the whole thing kind of works as long as the people at the top don't splash the cash so to speak (or let anyone know you can just conjure it out of thin air). Hence; Timekeepers.

The Timekeepers should have been done better. Cillian Murphy did a heroic job at playing that most feared of alignments; Lawful Neutral, but you can't help feeling that with 50 years of training, experience, marksmanship practice and so on, that the Timekeepers should have little trouble running people to ground and or just shooting them dead. The ending in particular was a joke. Yay I ran down the fugitives... damn I ran out of time and died. Seriously? If your that forgetful how do you reach 70 years old?? The premise that he came from the ghetto so kept his clock low is completely undercut by the assumption that when one lives in hours and minutes one has an extremely good sense of remaining time. Or one is dead.

The twist I was really hoping for here is that the Timekeepers didn't actually need Time at all. (Hey I've got a leather trench coat and a glock - hence I must be immune to SOME rules). If they're the agents of the immortals running the whole system, and their job is to make sure no one realises just how short the stick they got given was, then it would make sense that they are de facto outside the rat race. They can't be bribed, bought, slowed down or in any other way deflected (apart from death - being shot didn't seem to stop Leon for long).  In this world the final scene plays out as it did, apart from Raymond Leon (somehow) loses his gun. They have the discussion about Time. They all watch his clock. It ticks down to 0. They continue to stare, and then both get shot because you've missed that while watching the clock you've stopped watching what else he's doing. Aside from the irony of Mr "I'm a pro arm-wrestler" losing to his own trick, this would also do a much nicer job of tying in the "resistance is futile" line. You really can't win, because they aren't playing by the same rules.

On that note after Timberlake and girlfriend have met their end to Leon the closing scenes should have been consequence to a society when the workers stop working. The rich continue as normal, oh they import food from different regions and some of them fly off while the interruptions are resolved, but all the people in the ghetto suddenly find out that having a month rather than a day is great, but not having food because the guy who runs the shop, or drives the transport lorries, or workings in the process plant, have all bummed off because they got given freebies.

So that's my suggestion - Murphy kills Timberlake and arrests his plus one if killing faux-teenage girl bank-robbers isn't done in cinema these days (she didn't have blue or even red hair so no plot immunity from me). The proles riot, loot and die because the system has been screwed with. The rich survive, and the end? The bureaucrats who run the world note down some loss of Time in Region 21 due to disturbances, and just adjust the numbers to bring everything back into alignment.

If I were immortal, and had an immortal secret police/special forces unit to keep things running, I would not be derailed by a factory worker with a stub nose stuck in his socks.

Happy trails,
/Z