IN TIME (2011) - Bonnie & Clyde, 2161.

In the year 2161, medical science has become so doubleplusgood that humans have been able to stop aging at 25. Once a person reaches that age, they either die off as they 'expire' or they keep on living, possibly forever, as long as they are filthy rich. You see, with aging stopped, time has become money, and it's used to buy anything, from cappuccinos to decades of life. The poor die off pretty quickly or else live on a day to day basis, while the rich fat cats (gotta love that modern day relevancy!) live on in extreme luxury while keeping their 25 year old bodies intact.

With the boy band scene finally dead, JT takes to the factories.

 Will Salas (Justin Timberlake) is one of those poor folk, a 20 something factory worker living with his mother (Olivia Wilde). Together they try to make ends meet as they go about their daily lives in the ghetto parts of Dayton. One night while getting his drank on with his boys, Will saves a time-rich stranger from being mugged. The man (Matt Bomer), a super rich 105-year old tells will he's tired of his life, and gives Will all of his remaining time, over a century in total, and commits suicide. Life in the future ghetto being what it is though, bitchslaps poor Will when he sees his mother die in his own arms after she runs out of time later that night.

In the not so distant future, douchebags live forever.

Rich with time and with vengeance on his mind, Will goes off to do what else but to make it rain with the rich people in their exclusive part of town. Here he meets a millionaire named Weis at a casino and hits it off with his daughter Sylvia (Amanda Seyfried). The party is broken up when a 'Timekeeper' by the name of Raymond Leon (Cillian Murphy) is sent to catch Will and take his years. They do so, leaving him with less than a day to live, but Will escapes by taking Sylvia hostage, and he's forced to take to the road and hide from the cops. All the while, he has to deal with the snooty rich girl and find a way to get back his time before he ends up as dead as the careers of Timberlake's fellow N'Sync'ers.

DERP.

The concept of time as money in this weird dystopian future sounds promising, but instead of exploring it a bit further, the movie just goes into full-on preachy mode about the haves and have-nots, trying to pass off Will and his arm candy as some Robin Hood wannabes. It tries so hard to be relevant with the present economic trouble that all it was missing was some extras with 'Occupy Dystopian Dayton' placards. The movie aims to be stylish which unfortunately at the expense of being stupid. Why do people in the year 2161 still use the same cars, guns and technology as they did in 2010? A hundred odd years into the future and all we have to show for it is a shiny, green left arm? Screw that.

Wasting Cillian Murphy in a shitty villain role... Tsk tsk.

 In Time is a barely passable action movie but it is utterly forgettable. Timberlake seems like a nice guy and all and gets props for the effort, but he just can't carry a movie like this by himself. The story gets a few points for originality, but once the novelty wears off it degenerates into bargain bin predictability. Cillian Murphy is criminally wasted as the villain who doesn't even get a decent sending off, while the whole glowing arm thing gets old after the first couple of scenes and there's just not enough action to push this movie out of mediocrity.

Best scene: all of the ones that imply that future moms might look like Olivia Wilde.

Best line: You'd have to be really desperate to quote anything from this movie. Not a single decent one-liner in sight!





TL;DR - Wasted premise, half-decent acting, and weak action. I want my time back - 2.5/10

TRON: LEGACY (2010) - A feast for eyes & ears

The original Tron was a landmark movie for special effects and computer graphics. In the 1980s, computers were just starting to come into their own in the movie business and the ability to create the sort of images we take for granted today was unheard of. Think about it: movies on the Lifetime channel probably have CGI a hundred times better than what was possible in the '80s. The computers used to make Tron had about 2 MB of memory, less than even the cheapest cell phone today, but at the time, it was the coolest thing to ever hit the screen. It's no surprise that Tron became a cult classic, and it's equally no surprise that Disney knew it'd have to pump out a sequel sooner or later when the technology wow-factor came around. So now, twenty something years and $150+ million later, we got TRON: Legacy.

The CGI is amazing. The acting isn't.

The movie opens with a flashback to 1980s, featuring a young Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) tucking in his young son Sam to bed and telling him about work at his EMCON company. Flynn leaves after promising to see Sam in a bit, and later vanishes without a trace. Twenty years later and Sam (Garrett Hedlund) has grown up into the company's biggest shareholder in the wake of his dad's disappearance. Apart from dropping by once a year to play tricks on the company executives, Sam hardly seems to care about his company, and is sort of a loner - living in a garage with his dog and riding his sleek bike around while looking cool in leather jackets.

Olivia Wilde in 3D - puts butts in seats

One night, Flynn's old friend Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner) tells Sam about a page he received, which strangely seems to have come from Flynn's old video arcade. Sam reluctantly heads over to investigate, and finds an old mainframe waiting for him. After messing around with the keys, he is transported into a virtual world inside the computer - the Grid. Immediately after arriving in the Grid, Sam gets into trouble. He's picked up by programs and sent off to the games. The games are essentially gladiator fights to the death, and while fighting the most feared program on the Grid, Rinzler, Sam is discovered to be human. He's taken to see CLU (young, computerized Jeff Bridges), who is a copy of his father Flynn, and has become a dictator in the Grid. CLU fights Sam in the arena, and just as he's about to kill him during a light cycle race, in comes Quorra (Olivia Wilde) to save his skinny ass.

Quorra takes Sam to her hideout, which is revealed to be Flynn's home. Flynn has been trapped in the Grid for over twenty years, hostage to CLU and unable to escape. After being reunited with his father, Sam learns that the page he received originally came from CLU, as he is desperate to get out into the real world and enact his vision of a "perfect system." Flynn warns his son that it would be catastrophic if CLU got out, and both of them, alongside the oh so sexy Quorra have to do everything in their power to prevent CLU from making it into the real world, while trying to get Sam and Flynn to make it out themselves.

The de-aged Bridges. You either like it, or it freaks you out.

Right from the start, the trailer for Legacy made it pretty clear that this was obviously an effects driven movie. The light cycle scenes are insane, as is the club fight scene near the middle of the movie. On the big screen and with brutal surround sound it's really good stuff. Some of the other scenes with long shots showing the entire virtual city are pretty rad as well, and of course if you like electronic music, you'll dig the Daft Punk soundtrack. Hedlund and Wilde do a good job with their parts, though nothing spectacular really shines through. Jeff Bridges has by far the most interesting role as Flynn, but it's almost a shame how little we actually get to see of him. Also criminally underused was Tron, who gets a rushed plot twist of his own near the end which feels a bit cheap.

The Dude abides in cyberspace!

Tron: Legacy is enjoyable, there's no doubt about it. The visuals are snazzy, the music is good, and fans of the original get their long lived patience rewarded (only a 30 year wait, right?). At the end though, I was left wondering if some of that ridiculous $170 million budget could have been spent crafting a story that could match the spectacle that unfolds on the screen. Sure, it's an extravagant orgy of light, color and sound and it's exhilarating to watch it on a huge screen and with massive speakers, but Bridges seems wasted and the only thing memorable about it is the obvious set up for a sequel. Maybe third time's the charm and Disney will prove me wrong when it comes out.

TL;DR - Visually dazzling and a glorious soundtrack. Just don't ask for a great plot too - 6/10