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In God’s Time

Dove review.

“In God’s Time” is a movie about the preciousness of time. It involves a bit of a fantasy plot, about a watch that shows the past and how important it is. It centers on five people and their situations. One man, a doctor, is losing his wife to cancer. It takes a toll on him and he turns to drinking and taking pills. A man named Jerry, who is homeless, sees his little girl by the power of the watch, and he goes in search of her. Another man, Brandon, is AWOL from the army. His brother committed suicide and he didn’t feel up to going back to the army. He gets a girl pregnant and realizes he has a responsibility to fulfill.

The acting is solid, and the various stories are all tied together and wrapped up nicely by film’s end. While it has some objectionable material due to some drug use, we are awarding this film our Faith-Based Seal as it contains a strong faith-based message.

Dove Rating Details

A fight in a bar; a man is hit in the back with a bat and then kicked by two men.

OMG-1; losers-1; bum/greedy bum-2; crap-1; da*mit-1; punk-1; D-1; fool-1; man says, "I hate those stupid guys"; a possible "H" (not clear).

Smoking of cigarettes in multiple scenes; man seen smoking a cigar; the drinking of alcohol in several scenes; a doctor takes pills in several scenes along with drinking as he copes with his wife's cancer; a bar scene featuring drinking; a drunken man, looking at his cell phone while driving, hits a man standing in the road and goes back to check on him, and the man survives.

Short skirt in a scene; man lifts up shirt and stomach is seen; bare-chested man in shower.

A woman with cancer is heard vomiting; tattoos on several people; two bums argue and scream at one another; a doctor talks to pregnant girl about her "options" but then apologizes for doing so later on; a girl screams that she hates men; a man says he has to take a "whiz"; tension between characters.

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There’s no time like the present in Daniel Antebi ’s fast-paced feature debut, “God’s Time.” From the moment Regina (Liz Caribel) sits down to share her grievances to an Addicts Anonymous group, the movie’s main character Dev ( Ben Groh ), cuts in and talks directly to the audience, filling us in on what we don’t yet know. This isn’t Regina’s first time spilling her emotions to the group—it’s part of a months-long series of complainants about the dirtbag boyfriend who moved in, took over her apartment and her dog, and how she prays that “he’ll die on God’s Time,” among other angry wishes. Dev, who’s in the group with his aspiring actor friend Luca ( Dion Costelloe ), says he’s madly in love with Regina, so much so that he’s practically the only one to realize when her typical one-woman showcase varies from the script. Afraid Regina will make a rash decision and seek revenge on the bad ex-boyfriend, Dev convinces Luca to help him track down Regina and prevent her from making a deadly mistake.

Written and directed by Antebi, “God’s Time” comes out of the opening credits swinging with different visual styles, a tongue-in-cheek sense of humor, fast editing, and Caribel’s volatile performance that burns up the screen. Because of its tight timeline and frenetic dash around the city, there’s a resemblance to Martin Scorsese ’s “ After Hours ” in the movie’s DNA. Unfortunately, “God’s Time” doesn’t quite sustain the momentum or freewheeling style of its start, nor does it come close to achieving those energetic highs again. Antebi, cinematographer Jeff Melanson , and the editing team of Antebi, Jon Poll , and Sara Shaw channel filmmakers like Edgar Wright (“Scott Pilgrim vs. the World") and Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (“ 21 Jump Street ”) for “God’s Time.” But sadly, their bombastic start peters out to a look that’s drabber and less eclectic. By the movie’s end, the cheeky humor sours into tearful dramatics, and its tempo slows from the many cuts-a-minute edits to something more somber.

Still, there are some redeeming aspects to “God’s Time.” The movie is one of a handful to directly address the early days of the pandemic in 2020 without being about the crisis itself. Interstitial cuts to the A.A. group’s move from in-person meetings to Zoom calls thread seamlessly into the trio’s introductory drama. Haphazardly worn handmade masks are everywhere, from the street to intimate meeting spaces. In one of the movie’s tangents, Dev and Luca follow Regina to a client’s affluent apartment, where she begins using again, but the rendezvous is interrupted by the client’s wife in a face shield. These were all regular sightings back then, but what a throwback these details will feel like in a few years’ time. 

Likewise, Caribel’s standout performance gives “God’s Time” life, a sense of dangerous volatility, and a heart. Though the movie’s narrator Dev approaches Regina as a mythologized moody dream girl turned “hell hath no fury like a Latina scorned” symbol, Caribel’s emotional performance makes the character believable. There are solo moments to her struggle that Dev and Luca do not see, but the audience does see her tearful phone conversations and angry moments talking to herself. Regina is far from a flawless character waiting to be rescued by two guys, and Caribel embraces her character’s complexities beyond the braggadocio she first presents.

Despite the movie’s less-than-24-hour timeframe, much happens for the unholy trinity in “God’s Time.” The side plots and silly tangents along the way keep the film barreling towards its climatic showdown, but this is where the energy starts to drain from its central story. While there isn't enough to love about the film itself, there's enough from Antebi and Caribel’s stunning performance to keep “God’s Time” lively, making it a memorable feature debut for both director and star.

Now playing in theaters.

Monica Castillo

Monica Castillo is a critic, journalist, programmer, and curator based in New York City. She is the Senior Film Programmer at the Jacob Burns Film Center and a contributor to  RogerEbert.com .

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God's Time (2023)

Ben Groh as Dev

Dion Costelloe as Luca

Liz Caribel Sierra as Regina

Christiane Seidel as Sydney

Jared Abrahamson as Russel

John Pope as Robert (Doorman)

• Daniel Antebi

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• Brian Reitzell

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‘God’s Time’ Review: Saving Her From Herself

Instead of making a thriller, the writer and director Daniel Antebi opts for a boho buddy comedy, with mixed results.

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By Glenn Kenny

In most 12-step programs, attendees are advised to keep private what happens in the meetings. But what if somebody in the room announced an intention to commit murder? Such a conundrum might make for a good thriller.

With “God’s Time,” the writer and director Daniel Antebi instead opts to make a boho buddy comedy that eventually becomes a grim parable of violence and presumptive heroism.

Dev (Ben Groh), the fourth-wall-breaking narrator of this story set in Lower Manhattan, is an aspiring actor who goes to 12-step gatherings with his best friend, Luca (Dion Costelloe), and the volatile beauty Regina (Liz Caribel Sierra). It’s clear that Dev is crushing hard on Regina. When she announces in a meeting that she intends to murder her apparent dirtbag ex-boyfriend, Dev goes manic and enlists Luca on a quest to save Regina from herself.

The movie’s nods to genre pictures (such as when Dev imagines himself as a superhero), occasional forays into rough-around-the-edges animation, and quasi-Rabelaisian humor suggest what one might call “Daniels energy” (as in the creators of “Everything Everywhere All At Once”) on a microbudget. The payoff is mixed.

The three principal actors, particularly Sierra, are appealing. But the story is thin, and the jokes are more cute than funny. What initially looks to be an amiably bouncy cinematic journey turns kind of pedestrian in distressingly little time. By the end, Antebi seems to pad the movie with outtakes and a pharma ad parody to get the picture up to a reasonable feature length.

God’s Time Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 23 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on most major platforms .

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In God's Time (2015)

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Four characters lives are transformed when they come into contact with a supernatural wristwatch that reveals the light and darkness within and brings forth a higher level of consciousness.

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Product Description

Living in a big city can be very lonely and discouraging but then sometimes God will intervene in order to repair broken relationships, hearts and souls. Set in Los Angeles, the loneliest city in the world, the film In God s Time relates such a journey as it follows four characters who have lost their faith and are struggling with the gritty challenges of a life filled with anger, sorrow, resentment and fear. Enter a mysterious watchmaker named Charlie, who sets in motion a chain of events with a special wristwatch that brings a new perspective on the past. The wristwatch first takes hold of a curmudgeonly panhandler named Jerry and then weaves it s way to transform the other characters Rorry, a millennial who is on the outs with her parents due to an unplanned pregnancy; Dr. Keith Phillips, Rorry s uncle; and Brandon, a lost soul who has been living out of his car since going AWOL from the Army. As each one of them comes to face their personal trials (addiction, terminal illness, death of loved one), it is through the power of the wristwatch they have a chance to encounter the healing love of Christ all in God s time.

Product details

• Product Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.25 x 5.25 x 0.5 inches; 3.2 ounces
• Media Format ‏ : ‎ Widescreen, NTSC
• Run time ‏ : ‎ 1 hour and 23 minutes
• Release date ‏ : ‎ April 4, 2017
• Actors ‏ : ‎ Sam Horrigan, Courntey Palm, Tonita Castro
• Studio ‏ : ‎ Bridgestone Multimedia Group, LLC
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B06ZY8MSK9
• Number of discs ‏ : ‎ 1
• #20,291 in Drama DVDs

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God's Time Reviews

God’s Time is a promising directorial debut by Antebi, and it has one of the best performances by upcoming actors.

Full Review | Sep 8, 2023

God’s Time is a more-than-impressive debut for Antebi and the entire cast. The film has a magnetic presence that forces the audience to really pause and take everything in. It’s a cacophony of chaos, love, and hope.

Full Review | Jul 24, 2023

Mr. Antebi’s intent is fun, and he stays on point from the start. But he’s also created characters of considerably nutty complexity and provided his cast members with the space to go deep, and catch us off guard.

Full Review | May 3, 2023

Antebi channels bits of early Spike Lee grit and the Safdie brothers, balancing a stressful, uneasy atmosphere with quirky characters who are entertaining enough to hold their own.   

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Mar 6, 2023

God’s Time delivers more than enough excitement to make it worthy of yours. With three performances that play off each other and a fun screenplay, you might find yourself enraptured.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Mar 4, 2023

What you have here is a first-time filmmaker who has some skills but not the material in which to apply them.

Full Review | Mar 3, 2023

Sometimes restricted by its dependence on self-referentiality, God’s Time is both a uniquely youthful take on a classic genre, and one that if more committed to its deconstruction and depth could become a modern classic of its own.

Full Review | Feb 28, 2023

With style and attitude to spare, this dizzying comic odyssey involving three New York addicts connected through their recovery group ultimately feels detached and inconsequential.

Full Review | Feb 27, 2023

To make things interesting and always lively, Antebi, who is making his debut here, populates his movie with stylistic flourishes that both feel kinda cool and peppy but also excessive and frustrating.

Full Review | Feb 26, 2023

An appealing cast and sharp editing help the narrative buoyancy along. The devil may lie in the details, but some divine inspiration saves the day.

Full Review | Feb 25, 2023

All the actors deftly handle the humorous and dramatic facets of the picture with strong, rapid-fire delivery.

Full Review | Original Score: 6.5/10 | Feb 24, 2023

The individual pieces mostly work, but they don’t quite fit together.

Full Review | Feb 24, 2023

Unfortunately, “God’s Time” doesn’t quite sustain the momentum or freewheeling style of its start.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 24, 2023

It's a ton of fun. Groh is the exact type of manic energy you love to witness from afar with Costelloe's unmoving innocence and desire to not ruffle feathers proving the perfect foil while Caribel steals control via a take-no-prisoners attitude.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Feb 24, 2023

It's a rush of style and dark humor, and there's a real unpredictability to how things unfold...

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 24, 2023

What initially looks to be an amiably bouncy cinematic journey turns kind of pedestrian in distressingly little time.

Full Review | Feb 23, 2023

A frequently fun, sometimes frenetic comedy (of sorts) that suffers more for having a crappy title than for any of the filmmaking or acting involved.

Full Review | Original Score: 7.5/10 | Feb 23, 2023

In one ending credits outtake, someone says, “we didn’t make a movie; we made a vibe,” except it comes across like condescending desperation to justify everything here that doesn’t work

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 22, 2023

Yet another witless and asinine bore.

Full Review | Feb 21, 2023

Even at 82 minutes, it’s a heavily padded out concept, more demo... than a film with a life of its own.

God’s Time (2023) Review – Liz Caribel Sierra is excellent in this frantic albeit frustrating Safdie-esque addiction comedy

Daniel Antebi’s ‘God’s Time’ isn’t just a few syllables away from the 2017 Safdie brothers’ thriller ‘ Good Time, ’ but it also shares some of its DNA. For one, it is also set on the streets of New York City (which is not as bustling as the aforementioned, having been set during COVID), and second, it also has the same anxiety-inducing thrills that lead its morally ambiguous characters into exceedingly dire situations.

The result is a microbudget indie that is part – a buddy comedy adventure and part a look at addiction – both to drugs and to people. To make things interesting and always lively, Antebi, who is making his debut here, populates his movie with stylistic flourishes that both feel kinda cool and peppy but also excessive and frustrating.

The film opens and ends at AA meetings and introduces us to Regina (Liz Caribel Sierra) as she narrates her daily set of boyfriend-hating jargon. Dev (Ben Groh), who constantly breaks the fourth wall and is our unreliable viewpoint to this story, tells us that she is repeating the same set of words as she always does. Most of her confessions, with slight variations, always end with the phrase ‘“he’ll die on God’s Time.” While these words are meant for her ex-boyfriend – who, according to her, first moved into her apartment and then asked her to leave, taking over her boarding and her dog. They are never meant to be taken seriously.

But today! Today was a little different. Regina doesn’t end her confession with ‘God’s Time,’ which would feel completely okay to a normal person, but to Dev, it feels like a whole other ball game. He first convinces himself, then the audience, and then his best friend Luca (Dion Costelloe) that Regina is out for blood. Luca (who, along with Dev, has a sort of thing for Regina) is not entirely convinced, but he is slowly dragged into this adventure across the city where the two team up to find out what’s up with her – leaving their very important audition astray.

Now, their adventure is full of rando cross-overs; at one point, Dev seems to magically fly into an ad-spoof, and there are like a gazillion whip-pans and mysterious close-ups which feel technically astounding for a low-budget film, but often also end up feeling frustrating. Except for a really well-done superhero sketch, these sequences don’t feel as funny as they were intended to be. To add to that, the film, which is closely cut down to a little under 90 minutes, feels like it has a lot of unnecessary clout that could have been avoided.

That said, God’s Time, in spite of a not-so-serious tone, carefully maneuvers over its theme of addiction and self-realization. The chemistry between Ben Groh and Dion Costelloe works because their mutually conclusive characters cancel out each other in a way that also clues us into the toxicity of what is keeping them from being completely honest with each other. And while much of the film’s focus is on the two of them, it is Liz Caribel Sierra’s Regina that ends up being a complete standout.

In what is a definite star-making turn, Sierra, who constantly shifts from her New York street lingo to Spanish with ease, knocks it out of the park with a character that is hard to like. It is a treat watching her reach that point of self-actualization, and with that, God’s Time becomes a Good Time at the movies.

Read More: 20 Most Anxiety-Inducing Movies of the 2010s Decade

God’s time (2023) movie links – imdb , rotten tomatoes god’s time (2023) movie cast – liz caribel sierra, ben groh, dion costelloe, where to watch god's time, trending right now.

Getting fat with the wife. Absolutely loves the all-consuming, indulgent world of cinema.

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Flickering Myth

Geek Culture | Movies, TV, Comic Books & Video Games

Movie Review – God’s Time (2022)

February 21, 2023 by Robert Kojder

God’s Time , 2022

Directed by Daniel Antebi. Starring Ben Groh, Dion Costelloe, Liz Caribel Sierra, Christiane Seidel, Jared Abrahamson, Emily Fleischer, Segun Akande, Bobby Guarino, Elizabeth Kelly Hoy, Yvette Mercedes, Sol Miranda, Manuel Penichet, Luisa Sofia, and John Pope.

Dev and Luca race through New York to stop Regina, on a righteous mission to murder her ex-boyfriend.

The ending credits to God’s Time feature an outtake where one of the characters says, “we didn’t make a movie; we made a vibe,” except it comes across like condescending desperation to justify everything here that doesn’t work. It’s as if the filmmakers already know audiences will struggle to enjoy this, and it’s difficult to blame them.

Writer/director Daniel Antebi’s debut narrative feature is a stylistic and quirky dark comedy with an undercurrent of potential tragedy that never really succeeds at blending those aspects. It’s another entry in the fast-paced, stressed-out point A to point B sub-genre, here seemingly taking notes from the Safdie Brothers considering the New York City location, but it fails to elicit a sense of urgency or weight beyond its lame attempts at comedy. Also, it arguably has a crisis of perspective, clunkily shifting its focus across its three central characters, tight friends that have bonded at a drug addiction recovery program.

There is Regina (Liz Caribel Sierra), the recovering addict who repeatedly tells the story of how her ex-boyfriend didn’t help her but instead chose to kick her out of the house while also keeping her cherished dog companion (these scenes and other confessionals are often uninspiring and shot like a standard talking heads documentary). At the end of these monologues, she makes a threat that she will kill her ex-boyfriend and take the dog back before cooling down and assuring them she won’t do that since he will meet his demise in God’s time (like most recovery programs, finding and believing in any higher power, even one as nonsensical as a doorknob, is part of the process.)

Then there are long-time close friends Dev and Luca (Ben Groh and Dion Costelloe) rehearsing lines for an upcoming audition. They both have a crush on Regina, although viewers are made aware that Luca is sleeping with her while Dev is in the dark about it. Nevertheless, after one particular session, Dev notices that Regina did not end her speech with the part about God coming to get her ex-boyfriend, quickly concluding that she is relapsing and on her way to kill him for real. After some bickering upon learning the truth about the connection between Luca and Regina, Dev successfully convinces him to come on a journey to stop her from doing the deed, which is hastened by the realization that she has Luca’s father’s gun.

The severity of this situation is undercut by Dev frequently talking to the camera and other stylistic touches that bluntly feel out of place. Dev and Luca cross paths with Regina multiple times, unsuccessfully preventing her from continuing her mission for various reasons. The primary issue here is that the filmmakers never allow viewers to feel the weight and potential consequences of what Regina is about to do, as it’s more concerned with bumbling idiot wannabe aspiring actors that need to learn a thing or two about the meaning of friendship.

These lessons also feel hollow, stuck inside an amateurish script filled with contrivances and empty air. The performances themselves are fine, so there’s no opposition to seeing these actors again, but even considering God’s Time strictly by the vibes, it’s often uninvolving, even at only 83 minutes.

Flickering Myth Rating  – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★

Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check  here  for new reviews, follow my  Twitter  or  Letterboxd , or email me at [email protected]

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God’s Time — Daniel Antebi

As a film title, God’s Time looks and sounds a lot like Good Time , and the similarities don’t end there. Writer-director Daniel Antebi’s tale of two recovering addicts and best friends making their way through the seedy underbelly of New York City over the course of one eventful night certainly calls to mind the Safdie Brothers’ breakout from 2017, as does its emphasis on style over substance. But where the Safdies’ were able to distill something wholly unique and uncomfortably immersive out of admittedly shopworn parts, God’s Time feels like nothing more than an indie exercise in excess, its stylistic choices both hopelessly dated and frustratingly alienating. Within its first five minutes, Antebi utilizes fourth-wall breaking, frenetically edited montages, whip pans, and overlaid text that annoys more than it stimulates, the desperation practically dripping from the screen.

Best buds Dev (Ben Groh) and Luca (Dion Costelloe) are subsequently introduced at a recovery meeting — something apparently so exotic that the film literally stops dead in its tracks to explain what one is — where various individuals share their tales of woe, including the loquacious spitfire Regina (Liz Caribel Sierra). It’s soon revealed that both men are in love with this headstrong Dominican, even as her various confessions hint at a deeply troubled individual. After one particularly unsettling share session in which Regina vows to kill her ex-boyfriend Russell (Jared Abrahamson) due to his refusal to give back her beloved dog, Dev becomes convinced that she will follow through on her actions. With Luca in tow, the two track Regina across the city, encountering everything from wealthy coke addicts to amusement park-obsessed grandmothers to gunshot wounds.

Taking place over the course of 24 hours and lasting only a scant 83 minutes, God’s Time should, if nothing else, be capable of delivering a hit of propulsive storytelling. But for all of the scandalous happenings and provocative themes on display, nothing of much interest ever happens, each potentially exciting new circumstance proving just as anti-climactic as the last. Where a film like Good Time leveraged its hyper-stylized visual flair and aural bombast to plant the viewer within its protagonist’s horrific predicament, continually ratcheting up the anxiety-inducing tension on the strength of the film’s aesthetic onslaught, Antebi employs such stylistic bluster simply as a means to distract from a script that feels only half-finished. It’s only in the film’s final scene that it, quite ironically, comes to life, as Antebi drops the bullshit theatrics and at last foregrounds his trio of lead actors, with Costelloe delivering a killer monologue that’s keen authenticity clashes with everything that has preceded it. With any luck, God’s Time will propel the talented performer to bigger and better things; indeed, all of the actors here deserve more than this tonal mish-mash and overblown bid at indie cred.

Published as part of Tribeca Film Festival 2022 — Dispatch 1 .

• by Steven Warner
• Horizon Line

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Book Reviews

In 'old god's time,' sebastian barry stresses the long effects of violence and abuse.

Michael Schaub

Tom Kettle has seen enough evil in his life. The 66-year-old Irishman has retired from his career as a police detective and moved to a small lean-to adjoining a castle in the town of Dalkey. He's relieved to be done with his days in the Garda Síochána, Ireland's national police service: "All his working life he had dealt with villains. After a few decades of that your faith in human nature is in the ground. It's a premature burial, predating your own."

The Garda, unfortunately, isn't done with him. In his new novel, Old God's Time , Sebastian Barry follows Tom as his life is thrown even further into disarray when he's confronted with a past he'd rather forget. It's a relentlessly bleak, stunning novel about how the effects of violence and abuse can reverberate for years and across generations.

Tom is mostly enjoying his retirement — being "stationary, happy and useless" — when he's visited by two Garda detectives who say they think he might be able to help them with a case. Tom takes an instant shine to them, and his first instinct is to offer his assistance, but he pales when the detectives tell him the case involves a priest who was murdered years before. "Jesus, go home, boys," he thinks. "You are bringing me back to I don't know where. The wretchedness of things. The filthy dark, the violence. Priests' hands. The silence ... The fullest humiliation of it felt afresh. Still present and correct, after all the years."

Tom is still haunted by the case. The priest in question was suspected of sexually abusing children, and Tom considered his death no great loss — he was abused as a child by a Catholic brother, and his late wife, June, was repeatedly raped by a priest when she was a little girl. Both suffered post-traumatic stress from the abuse. Tom recalls his wife's descent into emotional distance: "He had no way to reach her, even when she was home. She was a telephone not plugged in." He also remembers witnessing the sexual assault of boys — "with the light in their eyes put out" — at the hands of priests.

It's revealed early in the book that Tom is haunted by more than his childhood. The two children he and June raised have both died, although he at times imagines that both are still alive, with his daughter, Winnie, paying visits to him at his Dalkey home. Despite the anxiety and depression that visit him after the detectives come to his house — and his worsening memory — he agrees to help on the case when his old colleague, now a Garda chief, asks him to. Tom soon finds out that his involvement isn't exactly what he thought it would be.

Barry has always had a gift for creating memorable characters, and Tom is one of his most fascinating ones, in large part because of his unreliability. The novel is told from a third person limited perspective, and it becomes clear to the reader early in the novel that Tom, wracked with nearly unendurable trauma, doesn't know quite what's going on with his own life; it calls everything in the book — even the existence of some of the characters — into question. Tom admits as much: "He was clearly going mad. But he had read somewhere that the truly mad would never know they were mad. He knew he was mad. Was that a proof of sanity?"

Barry's prose is, as usual, wonderful. The writing, at times, borders on stream of consciousness, as Tom struggles to keep up with, and to avoid, his own thoughts. At one point, after the initial visit by the police detectives, Tom wonders if he's strong enough to withstand what his life would become: "Oh, oh the world was too difficult for him. It was. No. Wretched lie. Lying to himself, like a maniac, like a dark criminal with crimes too wretched to admit to, even to himself."

It likely goes without saying that Old God's Time can be immensely, almost physically painful to read; the novel contains descriptions of child sexual abuse that are unsparingly graphic. But Barry still approaches the topic with sensitivity — the scenes hurt to read, but in context, they feel necessary, refusing to let the reader escape from the kind of brutality that went unpunished for decades in Ireland and elsewhere.

Old God's Time is a powerful, painful novel, another excellent offering from Barry, who is clearly one of the best Irish writers working today. It's also a book suffused with a deep moral anger that refuses to let go of the crimes that destroyed the lives of so many. "People endured horrors, and then they couldn't talk about them," as Tom observes. "The real stories of the world were bedded in silence. The mortar was silence and the walls were sometimes impregnable."

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Content Caution

In Theaters

• October 28, 2011
• Justin Timberlake as Will Salas; Amanda Seyfried as Sylvia Weis; Cillian Murphy as Raymond Leon; Vincent Kartheiser as Philippe Weis; Olivia Wilde as Rachel Salas

Home Release Date

• January 31, 2012
• Andrew Niccol

Distributor

• 20th Century Fox

Movie Review

We sometimes talk about living on borrowed time. But no one takes the phrase quite so literally as those who live in the rundown Dayton district.

Here, in a world where time really is money—where people stop aging at 25 but start dying then, too, where folks spend minutes for coffee and weeks for a hotel room—the residents of Dayton literally live day to day. Will Salas, ever since his clock started ticking, has never gone a day with more than a day to live: He’s survived the last three years through guile and hard work—pulling extra shifts at the factory and then running home to share his precious minutes with his mother.

But there’s never enough time to do what you want to do, and Will knows that he can’t stay 25 forever. Prices keep rising. His wages keep falling. His time is running out.

Then one night he sees a guy at a bar spending decades like Monopoly minutes. He’s carrying more than a century with him—and carting around that much time in Dayton is like signing your own death warrant. Will rescues the dude from a tough scrape and spirits him away to safety. And while the guy appreciates the gesture, he tells Will that, at the eternally youthful age of 105, he’s ready to pull out the batteries.

“The day comes when you’ve had enough,” he says. “We want to die. We need to.”

Yeah, sure , thinks time-deprived Will, and he drifts off to sleep. But when he wakes, he discovers two curious things: One, his own internal clock has been reset with another 116 years. Two, his new friend is lying dead outside.

So Will’s been given the precious gift of time. Lots of it. But in this crazy, clock-obsessed world, folks like Will aren’t supposed to have extra time on their hands. They’re supposed to live and die like good citizens, so a few rich and powerful people can live for as long as they want. Will’s new cache of time violates the scheme of things—a delicate economic system that’s worked so nicely for … well, quite some time. And it’s not long before time-coveting crooks and time-keeping cops decide to clean Will’s clock, whispering to themselves, We want what’s … hours .

Positive Elements

Maybe we could all use a green, glowing countdown clock on our forearms—something that would tell us how much time we really had. Perhaps if we did, we wouldn’t waste our time like we sometimes do. Will, in some ways, sets a good example for us: He certainly makes the most of the time he’s been given—using every hour, minute and second to its full potential.

And that ethic hasn’t made him stingy, either. He’s generous with his time. We see him give a decade to a friend and an unspecified amount to a little homeless girl. He even gives a couple of hours to a timekeeper who’s pursuing him—allowing the cop to get back to base before he expires. Why? Because Will doesn’t think time should be rationed, that the poor should have days and the rich eons. He believes there’s time enough for all—and he pushes the powers that be to become fairer and more equitable.

(Now in so doing, Will becomes something of a chronological Robin Hood, and naturally that comes with its own set of problems. But while we may take issue with his methods, we can’t fault Will’s heart here.)

Spiritual Elements

For a world so obsessed with time, there’s very little mind paid to the subject of eternity. There’s a sense here that when your clock stops ticking, that’s it: You’ve just stopped ticking. There’s no discussion of an afterlife, no ruminations on God and whether He would’ve approved of time being used and abused in this way.

And yet faith is not entirely absent. There’s a mission house in Dayton that doles out time instead of food. The place is headed by an apparent priest (in the credits he’s called Levi) who bears a religious symbol that ever so slightly resembles a Christian cross. Will sneaks up on Levi at one juncture with a mask on, and Levi assumes that he’s being robbed:

“I don’t have much,” Levi says. “Everything I have I give away.”

“I know,” Will says, and loads up Levi’s counter with his own minutes.

One more spiritually themed note: The world’s time-based economic system is often characterized as fair, in a strictly survival-of-the-fittest sort of way. And the code needed to access a safe holding lots and lots of time is, unsurprisingly, Charles Darwin’s birth date.

Sexual Content

Will hooks up with a girl named Sylvia, daughter of a fabulously wealthy time magnate. The two skinny-dip in the ocean (we see a glimpse of Sylvia’s backside) and later play strip poker in a hotel room (Sylvia, dressed in only her underwear, is clearly losing when they pause to make out on the bed). The pair also smooches passionately a few times.

Women wear formfitting, cleavage-revealing clothing. A prostitute propositions a timekeeper, offering him 10 minutes of her time if he gives her an hour. Will makes a crude sexual allusion to a waitress.

Violent Content

In Time gives us a world in which people die when their countdown clocks hit 0. These genetically predetermined deaths aren’t particularly lingering: Victims look as if they were stricken by a sudden heart attack—a gasp, a grimace and they’re gone. We see a handful of folks go this way—one after his time’s been forcibly taken from him, another after losing a “fight” in which the contestants vie for each other’s allotments. A man gives away all of his time, killing himself.

The deceased get little notice, interestingly. And their bodies are sometimes left out in the open like old candy wrappers.

There are other ways to die of course. Several folks carry and use guns. One man is shot in the back of the head. Three others are gunned down in rapid succession and then laid out on a sidewalk like logs. Another takes a bullet to the arm and survives. People get punched, kicked and slammed into bathroom stall doors. Will and Sylvia get into a serious (though seriously fake-looking) car accident.

Crude or Profane Language

One f-word, three s-words and a smattering of other profanities, most prominently “d‑‑n” and “h‑‑‑.” God’s name is misused a half-dozen times (once with “d‑‑n”), and Jesus’ name is abused once.

Drug and Alcohol Content

We’ve always heard that drinking heavily can take years off your life, and in this movie that’s very, very true. Will, when he comes into some unexpected time, gives his best friend a decade. But his friend—who seems to spend a great deal of his spare (and not-so-spare) time at the local watering hole—wastes it all on booze and literally drinks himself to death, leaving behind a wife and baby.

Others drink wine and champagne. Will’s rich friend shares a flask of something with him.

Other Negative Elements

[ Spoiler Warning ] When Will has his gift of time—the time given to him by his suicidal friend—taken away from him by the timekeepers, he turns to a life of crime. He kidnaps Sylvia, though it’s not long before the two become the time-bandit version of Bonnie and Clyde. They begin robbing time banks, giving the poor most of what they take … a crime spree that eventually culminates in them stealing a great many years from Sylvia’s father and turning it over to the destitute.

“Is it stealing if it’s already stolen?” Sylvia asks. It seems like a fair question, but the answer still has to be yes. Because the counter-question is, If the stuff you’re stealing was really stolen from someone else, is it OK to spend it on yourself?

Will and Sylvia refuse to grapple with that second question, using their ill-gotten time to pamper themselves. Will and others engage in high-stakes gambling.

Someone throws up in a toilet.

It’s appropriate that In Time is so focused on the clock, because the film itself is a little two-faced. On the hour hand, we have this intriguing premise—the distribution of time. One of the world’s great levelers has always been time: No matter how rich or poor we are, we all get the same 24 hours in a day, and (quality healthcare aside) we can’t ever really buy more of it. In Time flips that long-standing reality on its head, transferring our days and weeks and years into the hands of a very few, very wealthy people.

But if you look at the minute hand, you can see that the film manages to transform this compelling theme into a silly, almost campy crime caper pandering to the Occupy Wall Street crowd. Certainly those who question the merits of capitalism and favor redistribution of wealth—however wealth is defined—will find much to like here.

And even then, In Time isn’t wholly consistent. It’s easy to latch onto the idea that hoarding time would be a crime. That the economic system in play here is inherently unpleasant. But the fact that Will and Sylvia spend so freely of other people’s time when they “steal it back” doesn’t bode well for an unswerving narrative. Shouldn’t they be giving that time back to its rightful owners? It feels sort of like a rapper railing against poverty on one song, then trumpeting his latest Maybach on the next. There’s just something unseemly about it.

The film tells us that time is a precious commodity. Agreed. It’s all the more reason to think long and hard before spending it on this movie.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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CULTURE MIX

Where Lifestyle Cultures Blend

Review: ‘God’s Time,’ starring Ben Groh, Dion Costelloe and Liz Caribel Sierra

Arts and Entertainment

Ben Groh , comedy , Daniel Antebi , Dion Costelloe , Emily Fleischer , film festivals , God's Time , Harry Bouvy , Jared Abrahamson , John Pope , Liz Caribel Sierra , movies , New York City , reviews , Tribeca Film Festival

June 20, 2022

by Carla Hay

“God’s Time”

Directed by Daniel Antebi

Culture Representation:  Taking place in New York City, the comedy film “God’s Time” features a racially diverse cast of characters (Asian, white, Latino and African American) representing the working-class and the middle-class.

Culture Clash:  Two best friends, who met each other in an addiction recovery support group, try to stop a woman in their support group from murdering her ex-boyfriend. 

Culture Audience:  “God’s Time” will appeal primarily to people who don’t mind watching rambling “race against time” movies where the potential and talent of the cast members cannot overcome low-quality filmmaking.

The smug and idiotic comedy “God’s Time” is a waste of time in how it inexcusably bungles a simple but over-used slapstick concept of two friends on a wacky “life or death” mission. Sloppily written and directed by Daniel Antebi, the basic premise of “God’s Time” is about two male best friends who try to stop a woman from murdering her ex-boyfriend. There’s not as much action in “God’s Time” as the concept suggests, because too much of the film has repetitive and dull scenes of people in support group meetings for addiction recovery.

“God’s Time” doesn’t get going with any real action until the last third of the movie. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing if it’s to build up suspense, and if the action in the movie delivers in a way that’s unique and memorable. But the action that comes very late in the movie is poorly staged and written in such an amateurish way, any hope gets squashed that “God’s Time” will go out with a bang. The end of the movie can barely muster a whimper. “God’s Time,” which is Antebi’s feature-film directorial debut, had its world premiere at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival in New York City.

The two best pals in “God’s Time” (which was filmed on location in New York City) are two men in their 20s named Dev (played by Ben Groh) and Luca (played by Dion Costelloe), who are both aspiring actors. You might as well just call them Dumb and Dumber, because that’s how Dev and Luca act in this movie. Dev is the story’s narrator, and he frequently talks directly to the camera to spew a lot of self-indulgent gibberish.

Dev explains early on in the movie that he and Luca met in a support group meeting for recovering drug addicts. They’ve been best friends ever since. They go on auditions together, they help each other rehearse for auditions, and they go to support group meetings.

Luca and Dev apparently have nothing else going on in their lives but going to support group meetings and going to auditions. That’s how boring these two shallow pals are in this movie. The movie never explains how these two unemployed and unsuccessful wannabe actors make money.

Dev thinks of himself as being more of a rebel than Luca. For example, the two friends have an upcoming audition where Dev is going up for the role of a firefighter named Rico from Staten Island. Luca thinks that Dev should cut Dev’s long-ish hair for the role, so Dev could look more like a firefighter. However, Dev refuses to cut his hair. Dev is also frequently annoyed that his Indian heritage is often mistaken for being Latino. The movie has some unfunny jokes about Dev’s ethnicity being misidentified.

The beginning of “God’s Time” actually starts off with a promising scene. Dev, Luca and some other people in their support group are gathered for a meeting. A very outspoken and opinionated member of the group is Regina (played by Liz Caribel Sierra), who is also in her 20s. Regina makes a point of bitterly mentioning in every meeting how she was betrayed by an ex-boyfriend named Russell about a year ago.

Regina, whose name is pronounced in the Spanish-language way (“re-hee-na”), angrily repeats in every meeting the details of what went wrong in this doomed relationship: Regina let Russell temporarily stay at her place while he was recovering from spleen surgery. Two months into this temporary stay, things went horribly wrong, but what they argued about remains unclear.

As Regina tells it: “The aforementioned dirtbag kicked me out of my own place and took my little dog Parranda.” Regina likes to show photos of the dog, which is a Boxer. Dev looks into the camera and says after Regina tells her sob story in yet another meeting: “Yo, it’s all true. I remember the day he kicked her out.”

The movie has a montage of Regina in different meetings telling similar versions of the same story. Even though Regina says some hateful things about Russell, such as wishing that she could kill him or that he should die some other way, she always ends her rant by saying that she is praying for Russell. “And I have faith he’ll die in God’s time,” she concludes.

Dev has his own confession, which he only tells to the camera: He’s secretly in love with Regina. As time goes on, it’s obvious that Regina knows that she’s very attractive and that Dev has feelings for her. Regina uses her good looks to manipulate the men who are attracted to her. She’s also a habitual liar.

During another support group meeting, Regina goes on her usual diatribe against Russell. And once again, she says she’s going to kill him. But this time, she doesn’t end her rant by saying that Russell will die “in God’s time.” This omission freaks out Dev, who’s convinced that Regina is going to murder Russell soon, especially when Dev find out that Regina plans to leave town the next day.

Unfortunately, the movie wastes a lot of time to get to that point. There are some dumb shenanigans with Dev and Luca canceling and rescheduling callbacks for an important audition because they get caught up in trying to find out what Regina is going to do. During one of the many scenes that show Dev and Luca in support group meetings, Luca announces that if he doesn’t get the job in his next audition, he’s probably going to quit acting. No one in the support group really cares, and neither will viewers of this garbage movie.

At one point, Dev and Luca end up stalking Regina. She has told people that she works as a “life coach,” and she meets with clients in their homes. However, Dev and Luca find out that in her “life coach” session with a client, she’s really doing cocaine with a middle-aged man (played by Harry Bouvy), who doesn’t have a name in the movie. He lives in an Upper West Side building that has a doorman. It’s implied that Regina is a sex worker because she and her client are shown snorting cocaine in their underwear.

It all just leads to a silly scene where Dev and Luca sneak into to the apartment where Regina’s coke-snorting client lives, so that Dev and Luca can find Regina when she’s there. The two bumbling buddies tell the building doorman Robert (played by John Pope) that they are Gentile assistants hired by their Jewish client named Mr. Goldstein, who doesn’t want to do anything on the Sabbath, due to strict Orthodox Jewish beliefs. The doorman uses a key to let them into the apartment, where Regina has already left, unbeknownst to Dev and Luca.

The man’s wife, whose name is Mrs. Levy (played by Emily Fleischer), comes home, sees Dev and Luca with her partially undressed husband, who has cocaine on his nose. She incorrectly assumes that Dev and Luca are gigolos who were hired by her husband. “How long have you been fucking my husband?” she screeches as she maces Dev. Luca and Dev then make a hasty exit. That’s what’s supposed to be one of the movie’s funny slapstick scenes.

What’s so stupid about this scene is that no doorman who wants to keep his job would let strangers into an apartment unit without verifying first that it was authorized by someone who lives there. When the enraged wife finds out how these two bozos got into the apartment, she screams at the doorman: “Do I look fucking Jewish?” This anti-Semitic reaction from a woman named Mrs. Levy reveals that Dev and Luca also used the wrong name to get into the apartment, which makes the doorman and this movie look even more idiotic.

It gets worse. The movie throws in a subplot about Dev thinking that he’s being stalked by someone who was in a road rage incident with Dev. While Dev and Luca are on a subway, Dev happens to see this man nearby (but he doesn’t see them), so an anxious Dev tells Luca about this incident.

A flashback shows that when Dev was riding his bicycle on a residential street, a truck driver cut him off. The two men started cursing at each other. Dev then threw a plastic bottle of his urine into the man’s truck and sped off. Dev is convinced that the man is now trying to find Dev and get revenge.

Regina lives with her single (possibly widowed) mother, who’s identified in the movie as Mrs. Reyes (played by Sol Miranda), who has the misfortune of encountering Dev and Luca, as these two imbeciles become more obnoxious as the movie continues. Regina isn’t home when Dev and Luca show up at her house. And you know what that means. Expect to see at least one very predictable break-in scene by these two moronic clowns, who race around New York City trying to find Regina and Russell.

By the time Russell (played by Jared Abrahamson) shows up in the inevitable confrontation with Regina, some secrets are revealed that are very underwhelming and unimaginative. The entire nonsensical execution of this concept relies heavily on the flimsy assumption that viewers are supposed to believe that Dev never tried to find out what Russell looks like before Dev and Luca go on a frantic “race against time” to prevent Russell from being killed. That’s why any surprises that come in the movie look too phony and hard to believe.

In addition to Dev’s tiresome comments when he talks to the camera, “God’s Time” over-uses irritating effects, such as slowing down and distorting people’s voices during the action scenes. Because the movie takes too long to get to the main concept, “God’s Time” looks like it could have been a short film, but with a lot of filler to stretch out the movie to its 83-minute run time. The movie’s outtake scenes that are shown during the end credits just prove that these scenes shouldn’t have been in this already dreadful movie.

The grating performances by Groh and Costelloe could have been more engaging if they had a better screenplay and better character development. Forget about learning more about who Dev and Luca are as people. This movie has no significant backstories for them or any indications of who else in their personal lives get quality time with them outside of the support group.

It’s briefly mentioned that Dev’s mother is an Indian immigrant, and he used to live in Kentucky. Luca quickly mentions his own father, who lives in New York state and is never seen in the movie. That’s it. Dev and Luca are written as utter fools who don’t have much about them to like, and they aren’t even entertaining in their buffoonery.

Sierra’s performance as Regina has flashes of very good comedic timing. However, the Regina character is written in a way that’s almost misogynistic. Dev and Luca go out of their way to be her “rescuers” (Luca’s motivations are later explained in the movie), but Regina is really nothing more than a selfish, arrogant and dishonest brat. Other than Regina’s good looks, the movie never explains why Dev is so “in love” with Regina, since she doesn’t seem to care about anyone but herself and maybe her dog.

Dev and Luca know about Regina’s continued drug use, which is never adequately addressed, other than Regina giving a relapse confession (with insincere-looking tears) during one of the many support group meetings that keep disrupting what should have been a better flow for this unevenly paced movie. The people in these support group meetings are written in generic and forgettable ways, with adequate acting from the people in these roles. “God’s Time” is more concerned about staging self-congratulatory scenes with bad gags instead of crafting memorable characters.

“God’s Time” looks like it’s trying to be a dark comedy, but there’s too much goofy nonsense for this movie to have any edge. If anyone wants to see a well-acted and edgy dark comedy set in New York City, with a “race against time” plot and a similar title, then a much better option is 2017’s “Good Time,” directed by Benny Safdie and Josh Safdie, and starring Robert Pattinson. “God’s Time” is an unfortunate misfire where the filmmakers forgot that in a movie whose concept is a chase comedy, audiences should care about at least one the main characters, the screenplay and direction should be solid, and it shouldn’t take too long to get to the chase scenes.

UPDATE: IFC Films and Topic Studios will release “God’s Time” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on February 24, 2023.