Tape

The concept, cinematically, of TAPE is the conceit that you are going to keep three actors in a room talking for an hour and a half and that we are going to stay interested. At the top we have a giddy and uncomfortable Ethan Hawke who is awaiting the arrival of his friend Robert Sean Leonard. The interaction between these two seems forced at the beginning...almost as if the two actors know they are stuck in a room for awhile and they better make it interesting. But soon enough, one comes to realize that the uncomfortability is due more to the estranged and uneveness of the two's relationship more than anything else.

TAPE unfurls in an imrov-like environment (I was actually surprised this was a play in that I did think the actors imrovising)where theres overlapping, interruptions, belches and tangents...it leads you to believe you are on a banal ride of actor's without direction and slowly steers you towards and unexpected conclusion. Luckily, true to Linklater, this conclusion isn't of the gunshot variety( always the easy out when faced with the harder possibility of character epiphany of any sort)but rather of the more painful type of self-reflection and realization.

Hawke bumbles, preens and flounders all over the screen as Leonard expertly evades scrutiny...but the real revelation here is Thurman. For the first time since Beautiful Girls she is just -playing-a person. Doing so, she shines right through in her most powerful role to date. She arrives completely in her own skin and then, without much of any prestidigitation, uses that same humble demeanor to lance through the boys complete murk and bulls**t. For that reason alone this film merits viewing.

It's other virtue is in it's rambling force in which it arrives at an honest dissection of our own hipocrisy.

"Tape" is not the best film of the year (in fact, it's not even director Richard Linklater's best film of the year), but it's a strong and intriguing movie experience all the same. Just three characters, one hotel room and a whole boiling pot of backstory. One could almost imagine Linklater, Hawke, Leonard (hey, isn't that Ethan Hawke's roommate 10 years ago in Dead Poet's Society?), and Thurman hanging out with a cool stage play and a DV camera and shooting the whole thing in one night. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing discardable or amateur about this film. But watch how the play, a simple story of old friends confronting old wounds, is transformed by the camera. The story is told in real time in a cramped room, but Linklater's over-cutting almost seems to extend time and space, creating a fully-realized world outside the hotel room walls without ever taking the camera outside. The performances are dead-on and suspense builds right under your nose. Rich and engaging.

The moment the credits were finishing rolling on my rented VHS copy of TAPE last night, I immediately rewound it and watched the movie through til the end a second time. It's that good. With this experimental and brilliantly realized piece, Richard Linklater proves he's no 'slacker' but rather a cunning force to be reckoned with in the movie world. Based on a play which takes place in one room with only 3 characters, you will either love or hate this movie - it's an all-or-nothing proposition, plain and simple. I recommend you get your hands on it, get extremely, ahem, RELAXED and find out which category it falls in for you.

Tape is a really smart movie. It debats the ideas of principles and perceptions as your own perception is constantly changed as the story (or should I say dialogue) unfolds. This movie is filled with layers just like it's characters (Ethan Hawk is incredibly funny b-t-w)and the ending adds a superb twist. Don't worry about the somewhat overly artsy camera angles in the beginning, you get used to it (and even start to enjoy it).

TAPE is raw, an uncut diamond, about the weltschmerz induced by fading adolescence, dealing with the past and coming to terms with reality - in short and unsurprisingly: perfect and typical Linklater material.