Tape

Shot on DV in one night at 'Tape' makes the viewer feel like a voyeur peeking into a motel room. It's set in a motel room where two friends reunite after 10 years (ironically Hawke and Leonard also appear together on screen more than a decade after their last film 'Dead Poet's Society') and have a private conversation that turns from the common catching up to unravelling secrets.

The entire movie is pretty much a conversation but it is a layered film with layered characters. The writing is brilliant. The editing it very tight. As the events unfold with clever twists, it becomes an intense human drama and a thrilling experience for the audience. While we are provided with sufficient background information on Amy and Jon, Vince remains somewhat of a mystery. His intentions remain for the viewer to interpret as there are hints that point in different directions. The hand-held camera mostly acts as hidden camera that lures the viewer to look into a private moment of these three character's lives. The swirling camera actually acts like a person itself, who's just sitting there while no one is aware of its presence. Once Linklater builds the tension, he sustains it and keeps the viewer engaged right through the end.

Being a conversational piece, it relies strongly on acting. The performances are solid. Ethan Hawke does a fine job of the (drug-induced) hyper but manipulative Vince. His character may be a bit ambiguous but he plays the part to the T. Robert Sean Leonard is adequate but in some places he seems a little lost. However, after Uma Thurman's entry, he is remarkable. Uma Thurman looks sensational with simple makeup. This is one actress who can look very plain when needed and supersexy when required. Her acting is excellent as she puts the pieces together while cleverly blindfolding the audience allowing them to figure out what happened.

While some people may feel confused at the end, it is very thought-provoking movie as one would try to figure out the puzzle. On the whole, 'Tape' takes us into a different territory that only a few Hollywood films have done. It has some great performances, good direction, brilliant writing and will very likely keep you glued to the screen.

This film took me two days to decide whether I liked it or not. When the final credits rolled, rather creatively at that, I couldn't figure out if this was pure brilliance on the part of Richard Linklater, or if it was nothing more than a group of friends trying to make an independent film. I could not decide. I even listened to the audio commentary of Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater to see if I could capture their mood of the film to hopefully influence mine. While it was a very interesting audio commentary, it only provided more indecisiveness. After thinking about this for two days, I finally thought about it long enough and realized that if a film makes you think for two days after viewing, there has to be something spectacular about it, and there was. After two days I was able to put my finger on it. You had a very chilling story, a deeply disturbing confession, a powerhouse of acting by Robert Sean Leonard and Uma Thurman, and then there was Ethan Hawke. I put him aside because it was his acting, his portrayal of Vince that took away the inches of film that nearly made it into perfection. Let me explain.

This is a story, that on the surface seems small, is very large in structure. While its only setting is inside a motel room, the written word by Stephen Belber transforms this into a thrilling drama about past lives and future consequences. From the opening scene of Hawke throwing his beers into the motel door until the final dramatic conclusion where Vince is caught up in the web of his own lies, we never really know anything about him. Leonard talks briefly about what he is doing and why he is currently single, but we never really get to know Ethan's character. This is what muddled in my mind for those two days, I continually had to ask myself who Vince really was. Was he a friend trying to help Leonard with a guilty conscious, or was he on the side of Amy trying to give her the conclusion that she wanted. Who knows? I think I needed more structure with Ethan's Vince. We needed more from Linklater to help us understand this self-appointed villain, or even more from Ethan to reveal his ultimate purpose. Instead, what occurred was Ethan just jumping around being annoying with no purpose except what you could hear Linklater telling him. Here is what I could hear: "Ok, Ethan, your purpose in this scene is to ensure that Leonard doesn't leave, do whatever it takes". Ethan takes this direction and adds a couple of swear words and uses screaming to keep him in the room instead of countering with more plot. Does this make sense? I felt like I knew why Leonard and Thurman were there in that room, but WHY Ethan was bringing them together was never told. I know that perhaps it was left up to the viewer, but this story needed a hint. It needed to provide some reasoning for the situation. I felt Ethan held us back from learning that. Someone else in the role may have done better, but Ethan just felt lost and stagy.

As I said before, Leonard and Thurman really carried this film on their shoulders. I was impressed to see Leonard taking such heavy work, but his true acting ability really came forth. The same goes for Uma who successfully took the idea of "husband and wife" away while working with Ethan. I was concerned that it would be a factor in Tape, but luckily these two were able to keep their characters separate. The chemistry that Leonard and Thurman had on screen was shattering. I found myself holding my breath during their parts from both emotion and the tension that they created. Outside of Ethan, they did a great job.

The story was a very tight story. I loved being brought into the middle of this controversy and seeing that a world can be created and destroyed in a hotel room. I thought that concept was a hard one to tackle, but Stephen Belber (who also wrote the play) did a fantastic job of eliminating the corporate element and giving us the pure human drama that exists between these characters. Linklater likewise really pulls this film together well by keeping the tensions high and elaborate as our characters progress through the phases of this predicament. The only trouble I had with Linklater's direction deals with his swirling camera. Whenever two people were talking to each other we found ourselves swirling between the two instead of using one large shot or quick cuts. I thought this was annoying at times, and quite dizzying. It detracted from the words that the actors were speaking and from the impact of the story. That is my only critique of Linklater's direction, which was nearly flawless.

Overall, this was an impressive and very intense drama that will keep you on the edge of your seat due to its strong reality and human element. It took me a while for me to realize this, and will probably take some time for it to sink into your mind, but that is the nature of this film. It is created to leave this lasting impression on your mind and to haunt your mind during your next visit with friends. I think Linklater did an excellent job with the material that he was handed, proving that his work could be compared to early Cameron Crowe material. Leonard and Thurman explode onto the scene, while Hawke leaves a bit more to be desired. I do believe that Linklater should have considered another actor for his role. Either way, this was a great film that took away the classic Hollywood backdrop and gave us nothing but 100% pure acting.

Grade: **** out of *****

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.

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.

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.