The Tesseract

Oxide Pang's adaptation of Alex Garland's novel, The Tesseract, employs every visual trick in the book to disguise the lack of strong narrative. However, the glossy veneer soon wears thin, revealing a rather dull story which ultimately fails to impress.

Jonathan Rhys-Meyers plays a desperate drug runner embroiled in a deal that goes wrong, when his consignment mysteriously goes missing. The tale is told in a non-linear fashion that at first confuses but eventually becomes clearer to those viewers that stay the distance. The problem is that director Pang leaves it too late in the day to start filling in the blanks, by which time all but the most patient will have given up watching.

The film does get marginally better towards the end – but is it really worth the wait?

Firstly, the film is as much about the characters as the plot, and that is always hard for U.S. movie goers to handle. But, if you can just get your head out of the television this film is well worth the viewing. The plot is simple, but the characters make it more complicated, because the characters are complicated. The central theme is desperation, each individuals desperation and how it plays out when fate brings together a series of events. In this case criminal activity. Again, the crime isn't so much the point of this film (although crime is always a fine cinematic filter for human interaction), it's how these various people, with all there personal demons and angels that they carry around interact with the crime.

. . . 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.

The book, The Tesseract, is written by Alex Garden (who wrote the incredibly book The Beach, and the screenplay to 28 days later). Although the novel was no where near the level of The Beach, it was still an interesting and gripping book. This film, on the other hand, is w*nk. It cuts out half of the story line, has horrible shots, transitions and effects throughout the whole thing, makes no sense, is extremely disjointed, and has the most wooden acting I've seen since... well probably ever. I am annoyed that I spent good money renting this out, that could've been spent on more beer. If you are tempted to watch this, think twice, put your blockbuster card down, pick your library card up. Trust.

PS. By the way for all the people that say my review wasn't helpful, grow up and learn to read

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")