The Tesseract

I thought this movie was a nice experiment. I liked the photography and the combination of B&W and colour in one shot, which makes the colour functional. I also loved the time-shifts and repetitions of shots from other angles. It gives the film its own identity. The general atmosphere of Bangkok as a setting seems quite successful to me. Saskia Reeves as Rosa and Alexander Rendel as Wit are very convincing, more than Jonathan Rhys-Meyers as Sean, who, I thought, has a tendency of over-acting. Of course paranoia is a most difficult role-aspect to act out. The initial scene, where Sean has a dream in which he's shot at, is too much a technical copy of typical Matrix-scenes. Even the sound effects seem to be an exact clone.

Oxide Pang -- one-half the Pang Brothers -- directs THE TESSERACT, a stylish, hyper-kinetic tale of good folks gone bad -- kinda/sorta -- in this kinda/sorta good-to-great film thriller.

By utilizing flashbacks, flashforwards, and ... erm ... flash-sidles (if there can be such a thing), Oxide Pangs crafts his film together more as an experiment in narrative voice, but he pretty much confides in this technique for the involved set-up of these four disparate folks: a drug dealer trying to score a big delivery; a comely psychologist trying to come to terms with the death of her young son; a professional assassin (can you ever have just one?!?!); and a thirteen-year-old thief who misunderstands the concepts of right and wrong. These four folks all converge on a hotel where their lives criss and cross as dramatically staged flybys and near-misses ... but, come the conclusion of the film, they collide with devastating results.

In a style very reminiscent of their earlier work, BANGKOK DANGEROUS, half-a-Pang flashes quick visuals with unusual camera angles almost universally throughout TESSERACT. However, some of the visuals pull the viewer away from the story a bit much, so the effectiveness of the technique -- perhaps a further study in it so far as Oxide is concerned -- is arguably debatable ... but the film's atmosphere is not. You can almost smell the decay when you're drenched with the seedier parts of the city, finding yourself quite possibly as repulsed as you are captivated by the events. Think of Oxide Pang's work as very Spielbergian in terms of tone and lighting, but with healthy parts of Scorsese thrown in to propel the narration.

Well-paced except for a few awkward moments early one where technique clearly outdistances the story, this slick glossy still makes for quality & interesting viewing ... but, as for shelf life, it might have a short life except for fans of the Pang Brothers and/or experimental films.

In Bangkok, in a low-budget hotel called "Heaven", the fate of four guests are interconnected due to a theft in a room: Sean (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers), a paranoid English drug dealer, that is dealing with a powerful local drug lord; the also British psychologist Rosa (Saskia Reeves), who is grieving the loss of her son and making a research with poor children in Thailand; a seriously wounded killer, hired to kill the mobster; and Wit (Alexander Rendel), a thirteen years old abused bellboy, that steals the guests. In the end, we see that it is almost impossible to control life, and sometimes, a subtle incident may lead to fatality.

I did not find the word "Tesseract" in Webster or American Heritage Dictionary, but in internet, I found that it would be a 4-dimensional cube. The explanation of this word is also provided in the introduction of the movie. Using this concept with four characters in a hotel, reducing to three and converging to one, the screenplay writer wrote a very original and intriguing story, apparently based on a book, confused in the first twenty minutes since it is non-linear, but attractive when the viewer understands the plot. I believe that watching for the second time, this film would be better and better, and that is my intention in a near future. I liked the idea of how difficult would be to control our destiny, which is connected and affected by the actions of other people. Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Alexander Rendel and Saskia Reeves give great performances. I really recommend this movie to audiences that like a dark and different story. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "No Limite da Realidade" ("In the Limit of Reality")

I'll have to admit, I was pretty much confused by this film. All the flashbacks and flash forwards had me reeling. Nevertheless, I was fascinated at the same time. It isn't quite the same story as the Alex Garland novel. To begin with, it's set in Bangkok, rather than Manila. I've seen "Bangkok Dangerous," which is a film by some of the same crew, and I think this is the better film. However, there are some incongruous elements. For instance, the boy "Wit" seems to have wandered in from another movie. He reminds me of one of those mischievous Third World sidekicks from one of the later Elvis films (fans of Rhys Meyers may appreciate the irony here). He can't really act, and he's obviously not Thai, but he's a winning presence nonetheless. The opening scene in the hotel room reminded me of "The Matrix," with its slow motion bullets. Later scenes were out of the "Reservoir Dogs" factory. Sandwiched in between were a couple of interesting stories, especially the one involving Saskia Reeves, as the psychologist who had lost her child. I also liked Jonathan Rhys Meyers, whose character is a mass of contradictions but who seems to grow as an actor with each film. See it for the film it could have been, but enjoy it for the experiment it is.

. . . that word would have to be "ack." Too danged artsy, trying too hard to be "avante garde." Stop action photography, cut frames effects, more darkness than a barrel full of--well, darkness, and the pastiest bunch of people I've seen in a long while. Sad thing is, it's a fair story, with some solidly laudable acting (and some solidly BAD, too).

Memento worked because it followed a linear pattern, even if that pattern was reversed. "Tesseract" leaps all over the place, leaving folks with that head scratching, pause-button-hitting sense of "huh?" Sure, you can figure it out, but do you really want to spend the whole movie figuring out time line instead of enjoying the film?

Unless that's your sort of gig . . .

In all? Ton of potential here, not much of it realized.