TBS

Faced with life-long detention as a habitual offender, Johan (Theo Maassen) escapes from a mental institution. Tessa (amazing newcomer Lisa Smit) happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. A teenage beauty on her way home from a night at the club, Tessa is right up Johan's aisle and promptly taken hostage. The trip that unfolds is in many ways a road movie, but at the same time, it's a chamber play: There are really only two characters, Johan and Tessa, and it's mostly set in cars. Until very late, we don't know whether Johan is essentially a good guy in a hard place or a dangerous madman out for a kill. Surely he can't be both? TBS is a flawless thriller with a great script brought to life by two terrific actors that keep you on the edge of your seat. Theo Maasen's Johan is an ambivalent character not unlike Edward Norton's altar boy Aaron Stampler in "Primal Fear", but rendered with even more subtlety and wit.

TBS is a movie I watched a long time ago and re-watched today - I've figured it's still worth it.

For a quick in simple summary of the movie, it works. The dialog seems a bit 'blunt', and this is a problem more Dutch movies haves. Everything else however, is seriously well done. The cameras are in the right spots, acting by Maassen and Smit is tremendously well done (I was surprised to see that this is the only 'big' movie Smit has acted in) and the story is a very good one as well.

The movie doesn't have any of the cheesiness more often seen in Dutch movies and the story is one that moves you - I myself was heavily affected by the ending, in a way few movies have managed to do (Sin City or Lord of the Rings come to mind). I really wish I would've rated the movie lower than a 9 to make my review seem less cheesy, but really, it is that good. If you've had the pleasure of hearing about this movie, then by all means watch it - you won't regret it in the slightest.

This film premiered at the Rotterdam International Film Festival. It's about a criminal who's under a special type of therapy, TBS. He manages to escape. The TBS method is very controversial and is often criticized in the Netherlands for the amount of escaped criminals lately. Director Pieter Kuijpers achieves to create an interesting mood, blending fear, violence, feelings of safety and dreamy thoughts in one paranoia mixture. This atmosphere is really powerful and easily keeps this movie interesting along the way. I'm not sure about the performance of Theo Maassen (he's a dutch comedian, couldn't really get that thought out of my head) but he's not a miscast. Lisa Smit surely fulfills her roll decently. The script is excellent and suspense is present at almost every moment. It's really powerful. I found the use of sound impressive, it's pretty special and powerful.

Overall it's just a great movie. It's still lingers in my mind a bit. I would recommended this film to everyone.

I love this movie! The acting is great and the plot is very good. Theo Maassen plays a strong main character which draws you in. You begin to like him, but he plays is very subtle and you feel his edges from the beginning. It's a guy you're not sure if you can trust him or not. Was he wrongfully convicted or is he the beast that others perceive him to be. It gives the movie a strong foundation and he maintains a great performance throughout. A couple of others in the theater weren't able to totally separate his movie character from his career as a comic, resulting in some laughs in the audience in some strange places in the movie. Nothing to blame on Maassen though, he did great. The girl in this movie is brilliant. It's the first role of Lisa Smit (only 13 or 14 herself) and she plays her character very well. She is a typical teenager, with all the problems and issues that girls have at that time in their lives. The plot of the movie had a nice pace and the tension is built up nicely. There is never a dull moment and almost all plot twists are believable. Only problem I had was a strange scene involving a group of journalists. The way they behaved seemed a bit contrived and purely there to help the story forward. They didn't fall in the current Hollywood trap of making a movie too long, it's perfect as it is, an hour and a half of pure entertainment.

I watched TBS as a Sneak Preview in Cinema... I use to go there every week... Sometimes I get very disappointed... But sometimes you're so lucky... ;)

TBS is one of the movies of the latter category... Until recently I wasn't very fond of Dutch movies... They used to have a lot of sex in them, bad acting, bad directing, low quality... But only since two or three months ago I'm starting to change my opinion... TBS is another movie that makes me believe the Dutch can produce quality... Although the plot isn't all too original (an escaped prisoner wants to prove his innocence), the subject of escaping prisoners is quite a resent subject in Holland... The end was kind of unexpected (call me naive) and makes me think this movie might just get a place in my very own gallery of honor... :P The acting is very good... Both Johan and Tessa are very convincing characters... Directing too is done well... Although the movie is not visually stunning, the atmosphere is well set...

Liked it very much... I can really recommend it...

Niels...