Set “in the near future” when Justin Timberlake is a viable action-movie lead, In Time imagines a world where the wealthy are immortal and no one ever ages past 25, which creates situations where your wife and daughter are near indistinguishable and your mom looks like Olivia Wilde. Indeed, to some that may sound like a hotness utopia, albeit a very sexually confusing one. It also sounds a lot like Logan’s Run meets Gattaca—which makes sense, as In Time is the latest from that film’s writer-director Andrew Niccol, who mines some similar ideas here about fighting a system in which one’s destiny all comes down to scientific engineering and social standing.
Thus, Timberlake is branded a criminal not because he steals time, but because he liberates time to give to the lower classes so that they can have more time—time that they will not waste like those who have too much time, because they realize that this time, time is of the essence. Indeed, you will hear the word “time” lots of times in this trailer, which, in the style of our time, also lays out most of the film’s major plot points, including Timberlake’s kidnapping of and eventual Stockholm syndrome-fueled romance with Amanda Seyfried. You’ll also see a parade of familiar faces, most of them smarmy and evil, such as Cillian Murphy, Alex Pettyfer, Matthew Bomer, and Johnny Galecki, though none so smarmy and evil, of course, as Mad Men’s Vincent Kartheiser. And then you will decide whether it’s worth your time. Time!