La relève

As other people have detailed more completely than I care to, this movie is mediocre at best if you're looking for a movie about philosophy. If you try to watch the movie from this point of view it's downright infuriating and deserves the single star that so many reviewers gave.

Watching the movie as a drama, it's passable. The teacher claims that they're doing a thought experiment but in actuality I would say they were playing a bad role playing game (think Dungeons and Dragons). Imagine a really nasty DM (the teacher) empowered to force others to play his game by use of his position of authority. He does most of the things that a bad DM does and for reasons consistent with most common role playing game drama. This doesn't really pull together to make a fantastic movie but it's decent.

The beginning is interesting, I would say until the second half. Nothing wildly exciting, has some nice little twist in there but very minimal. It is shot in a dreamy kind of atmosphere. For some completely non-constructive and no where plot related reason the class is in Jakarta (pronounced Yanky style Djakardda) and you can tell this by the teak hardwood furniture and the crickets in the back (duh). The second half is hopeless. All the close ups of clearasil clean pouts, island shots and fuzzy broken sunlight (a lot if it) can't disguise the mouth-breathy throaty delivered "philosophy" to be no more than pretentious romanticism. The ending is a joke. Or maybe it is 'so deep' we all didn't get it. I give it a 5 for the first half.

I liked the first half hour a lot actally. I wish it was just a short film becouse it would have been way better that way. That is all I have to say. It should have ended after they played out the first scene. (By the first scene I mean the first time they died in the bunker. Becouse everything after that was just complete BS. It was like they decided that they didn't actually want the story and the plot to make any sense and they flashed it down the toilet. And than there is the actual ending. It wasn't even worth watching becouse it had no relation to the story. It was about as bad as when the author decides they don't know how to finish a story and just says that it was all a dream.

The concept of this movie seemed promising; a philosophical thought experiment where you must decide who should live and who should die, all presented in a way that was both entertaining and involving for the audience. In the end though, I came away feeling that the script had been written by two people: the first 2 thirds were written by someone who did a crash course in philosophy and had only a vague understanding of the ideas they were trying to explore, and the final third was written by someone who manages to pull off the challenge of being unbelievably self-righteous despite their IQ of 70.

At the start, it (very) quickly glances over some other thought experiments which involve conflicts of rationality and morality (5 people tied to one train track, 1 person tied to parallel track, train coming down track with 5 people, but you have a switch that will change the track the train goes down to the one with only 1 person on, do you flip the switch?). They're well known to anyone who's familiar with utilitarianism, but anyone who's not covered them before will probably be left confused as to how the movie concludes immediately after asking the question that the switch flippers are murderers and offering no explanation as to why. But it's at least getting people warmed up for actively participating in the thought experiment rather than just being passive observers.

The main thought experiment, deciding who should get to live, is pretty interesting at first. Rationality and logic will be most peoples tools for deciding; the people who bring the greatest benefit to humanity should live. The movie then tries to test the boundaries of how far you'll stay rational for the greater good in situations which you may find immoral. Can 'bad' actions be justified if they're for the greater good (e.g. dropping the atom bomb to end WW2)? While this is good in concept, the script and characters fail to pull it off in a convincing way. The characters put up fights on grounds of morality in such petty issues that they come across as just being whiny children throwing a tantrum rather than humans stretched to the limits of what they'll do in pursuit of the greater good and finally drawing a line in what they can bear to justify to themselves as 'the rational thing to do'.

It was the final third that really ruined the film though. Up until then it may not have been great, but it was at least trying to explore philosophical problems. But at this point the self-righteous writer who can barely spell philosophy, let alone comprehend it, takes over. They completely ignore every concept of right and wrong the film has previously been exploring. The writer goes off on their own tangent with their view of what's 'good', which doesn't seem too bad at first, except it appears to be written by someone who has never actually stopped to consider why they judge something as 'good'. There is neither rationality nor logic behind their ideas, no concept of the greater good, in fact, you'd be hard pushed to find any interpretation of morality where the final writers 'good' may fit in to. It's just selfish, unbelievably stupid and defies any kind of logic. The writer isn't trying to write a thought provoking script, he's trying to write a 'feel good' story that ignores reality and is completely unrelated to anything previously discussed in the movie. I believe the writer was trying to convey something along the lines of rationality and logic not being the gold standard when it comes to morality, but he failed in showing anyone why this might be. His attempt to show this may have actually being so poor that, inadvertently, he actually reinforced the importance of rationality.

I think the movie does deserve some credit for presenting a story that will get viewers thinking about some interesting concepts, for that I would still recommend it for people unfamiliar with philosophy, but if you are familiar with the concepts covered then I don't think it's worth watching as it will add nothing new to what you already know and will probably end up just irritating you.

A bunch of kids who all seem to have arrived from the same toothpaste or shampoo commercial turn up for their last day at school ever. The teacher decides to run a philosophy role-play as a kind of review session. What follows are momentous life-and-death decisions with huge consequences for the fate of the human race.

Or not, as it turns out - because it is a classroom exercise. All the exotic settings, CGI explosions, and crisp cinematography cannot distract us from the fact that all that is at stake here is an A, B or C grade. There isn't even a mention that someone might FAIL the class - the stakes are that low! The teacher threatens the lead girl with losing her A+ in a manner that, if taken seriously, would see him fired for power harassment and incompetence. Are we meant to fear for her in this ludicrous moment? Unfortunately, that is as dramatic as this film gets.

The so-called philosophy is preachy and immature. The pupils all kind of blend into each other as characterisation is one-note. And absolutely nothing of value is tested or put at risk here. It's like The Breakfast Club was never made.

How this screenplay made it to the top of anyone's pile is a crime that should be investigated. Two stars - one for the cinematography, the other for the huge drinking game potential.