O Jogo da Morte

This is a tense psychological drama. A Dutch banker travels to Morocco to set up a food program at the behest of his Moroccan girlfriend. He is kidnapped by a group of extremists who hold him captive and ultimately torture him for information. But who, we wind up asking, is ultimately who? And what truly are everyone's motives? It's a tough film to watch as it deals not only with terrorism and our assumptions about terrorists but also with the challenging topic of torture as a means of obtaining information.

The best parts of the film involve the intense dialogs between the three main characters of the captive, Martijn (Ryan Phillippe), the captor, Ahmat (Laurence Fishburne), and the captor's accomplice, Aicha (Gina Torres). These three actors' performances are outstandingly authentic and riveting. There's no question that if you love to see actors at the top of their game that you shouldn't miss this film. Ryan Phillippe's role as Martijn, however, is the most demanding and he never falters. As the focus character, Ryan's performance creates an incredibly intelligent and complex character.

But this, nevertheless, is a flawed film. It sometimes stumbles over itself. There seems to be some serious issues with editing and pacing. That's too bad. But this is still definitely worth watching if you can handle it's frank look at modern man's sojourn into primitive behavior.

I recently watched Five Fingers (2006) on Tubi. The film follows a Dutch man who travels to Morocco to set up a food bank. Shortly after his arrival, he is kidnapped by an infamous "enemy of the state" who suspects the man has ulterior motives and is working for someone else. The domestic terrorist then begins torturing him to uncover the truth.

Directed by Laurence Malkin (Soul Assassin), Five Fingers stars Laurence Fishburne (The Matrix), Ryan Phillippe (Crash), Colm Meaney (Layer Cake), Gina Torres (The Matrix Revolutions), and Touriya Haoud.

This is one of those movies that's quite average in most aspects, but it still keeps you interested in finding out what will happen next and who is playing whom. The story is a long game of cat and mouse, with solid dialogue and average torture scenes. While the premise behind the torture sequences is okay, they could have been executed better. The film features multiple twists and turns as more details emerge about who is telling the truth, and the ending is both rewarding and a fun conclusion. There's just enough here to make it worth watching at least once.

In conclusion, Five Fingers is a fairly average espionage thriller, but it has enough worthwhile elements to make it worth a viewing. I'd give it a 6/10.

Of course, I could watch just about anything with Lawrence Fishburne in it, but here, his performance and skill as an actor really shines.

That's not to detract from the others in this film. All of the principal actors delivered absolutely excellent, convincing character performances.

The story itself is a bit controversial, to say the least. It's not that I doubt this sort of "extreme" rendition occurs in current times, but there are various threads in this story which could be debated.

Of course, I won't explain the outcome here, you'll have to see this film for yourself for that. But it does deliver an "outside the box" outcome which is certainly different than most films of this genre'.

In a way, it does remind me a bit of the film "Unthinkable", another look into the murky world of extreme rendition, covert operations with a dark twist, and so on.

I would suggest seeing this. Even if you don't buy the implications of the story, the acting in this work is first rate.

I picked this up from the library on a whim but didn't regret it. The story is obviously still very topical. It just manages to do this without resorting to any stereotypes - in fact, it challenges those very stereotypes. The more the story progresses the more you realise as a viewer that there is no clear right and wrong and you have to keep re-evaluating your own opinion on the characters and the situation they are in. For me this was really a movie that made me think. And although the blurb on the DVD case prepares you for a surprise at the end that doesn't mean the film is predictable. There are still some twists and turns that come quite unexpected. Of particular note is of course Fishburne's performance. Worth noting is also that the DVD cover can be deceiving: in Germany it only shows a maimed hand (which reminded me a bit of Saw). But: physical violence is not the focus of this film but rather the tension and verbal struggles between its two main characters. In fact, the film is so dialog-heavy that it's been compared to a play. With all the generic stuff on terrorism that's out there this really stood out to me and I highly recommend it.

"Five Fingers" is a great psychological thriller, which takes place mainly inside a torture room. The story is about Martijn (Phillipe), a young Dutch idealist who goes to Morocco to finance a food program from money he has embezzled; his cause is encouraged by his Moroccan girlfriend, Saadia (Haoud). However, as soon as he reaches Rabat, he gets abducted by a terrorist group, led by a dark character played by Lawrence Fishburne, who believes that Martijn has come there with a sinister purpose. They interrogate him harshly, and although in the beginning he tries to explain his mission, he subsequently decides to change his story. What is the truth, then?

Malkin provides us with a carefully crafted claustrophobic setting, with the tension gradually building up as the abductors play cat and mouse with Martijn. In this theatrical atmosphere, all actors give good performances, and are even moderately successful in applying their respective accents (Dutch, Arabic).

However, the best thing of all is the clever ending, which of course I am not going to reveal here. From that alone, the film deserves an 8/10.