The Gauntlet

Tat from start to finish! There is no story, no sense to anyone's actions, they just bumble along boring the viewer. If you want to watch something similar but way better then look at the SAW films.

The international title is a bit ... strange to say the least. But I reckon it works as good as anything else. And maybe better than The Gauntlet. You could call this the Cube underneath ... or something along those lines. Since Cube came out - movie tried to copy the formula. Some with more, some with less success.

I think this has some very interesting moments. Unfortunately even the charisma of the actors is not going to be able to save this entirely. But it might elevate it to a certain degree (no pun intended). That being said, the thrill and the suspense is being kept until the end. And if you like the actors (at least one of them, no matter the character they portray), you will have something to hold on to.

The end and some of the twists may feel stretched to say the least here too - but maybe you have given up on thinking too much about stuff and just give in and sort of enjoy whatever this low budget effort means and tries to do (for you)

The Gauntlet. A handful of strangers, all of whom have previously killed, find themselves trapped in a deadly and mysterious building. It soon becomes a fight for survival with challenging Biblical riddles to solve along the way. The Running Man and Saw are two movies that sprung to mind, with added Satanic references. There's plenty of violence and action to help pass it's relatively short running time, bit of suspense too. The ending is a bit hard to swallow though. Ba Ling, who was 47 at the time, looks fantastic. A reasonable if instantly forgettable time filler.

I just finished watching this, and I was pleasantly surprised. It's about 5 people who get trapped in some sort of ancient-like dungeon. There are a couple different rooms they have to get into in order to escape the gauntlet - which was the original title of the movie - and each room has a puzzle they have to solve before they can advance. Generally, a blood sacrifice of sorts has to be made.

Bai Ling (Red Corner, The Crow) and Warren Kole (24, The Following) lead the cast. This is probably the first movie since Red Corner that Bai Ling has been in in which she did not play some tramp, slut, or bimbo. She was actually allowed to act, and she did a good job. Plus she looks really good. She's close to 50, but looks half that age. I always thought she'd be a Chinese superstar like Li Bingbing and Xiang Ziyi, but for some unfortunate reason that didn't happen.

There are deaths in this movie, which I knew there would be, but I was still surprised at some of those who were killed. I can't say this was all that original, but it was pretty well done for what it was. The poster for this film doesn't make much sense when compared to the actual movie.

I recommend this movie. I gave it a 6-star rating. I might revisit that later, but I tend to rate a movie based on how I feel right after viewing it. Perhaps this deserves more like a 5-star rating, but even though the material has been done before, as I said earlier, they did a good job on it.

With how bad this movie is.

The movie start well, the setup is intriguing. Nothing groundbreaking, but the typical "Saw" kind of mystery, with a small group of people not knowing what is happening or why, and around untrustworthy people.

And yet, the dialogue is absolutely awful, the reeeeally slow revelation of the secrets annoying and when it's all said and done, you realize that there are an incredible amount of plotholes and the conclusion is not satisfaying enough to overcome the lack of production values, dialogues and acting.