Customer Reviews

Fermat's Room

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

These kinds of movies can be great fun. They're mystery thrillers that can keep the viewer involved and on their toes if done right. This one is done very well.

It's like "The Cube" meets "The Exam" meets "The Killing Room." All these movies have essentially one set with a fixed group of characters all needing to figure out the big puzzle. "Fermat's Room", like "The Cube" is math based and here the characters' lives are at stake, so knowing your stuff is essential. All have been invited to a location for what they think should be a fun evening in a sort of conference. They soon realize they are in a sealed room which gets smaller each time they answer a question incorrectly or later than the time allotment afforded them. Though not all of these characters are mathematicians, they all have particular expertise which can help them from getting crushed to death.

This is a fun movie. The brain teasers come at a fairly regular pace via an electronic device. Everything is done electronically and mechanically so there is no "person" to appeal to. And as each participant questions why they have been included in this death game a lot of secrets come out and a nifty cat and mouse game ensues.

The director and D.P. do a nice job of handling the single set. The actors are all good. The story and secrets unfold and an even pace and the brain teasers are engaging. This makes for a good time. This will not change your life but it should keep you thoroughly entertained throughout.

This Spanish thriller is clearly influenced by the movie "Saw," but brings more intelligence and many twists to the table. As the movie begins, four people who are skilled mathematicians receive a cryptic letter that leads them to an isolated building wherein they soon find themselves trapped, with walls that start to close in on them that can only be stalled by solving a variety of complex problems. Before too long, we begin to learn more about the backgrounds of the people involved, their complex connections, and the truth behind their captor in twists and reveals that are skillfully and increasingly tantalizingly dispersed to us. The movie features a taut pace so that, while the majority of the movie takes place in a single room, it never gets stale or tiresome, and while there are a few plot holes, the characters are well-defined and the structure of the story is strong, with a fairly satisfying ending (complete with a final wink to the audience).

Also, as the other reviews here have noted, while the people recruited in the movie specialize in mathematics, the challenges they're given to solve are not based in math, but more so in logic and probability. Yet, while some have taken issue with this, I think it makes complete sense, as math is not solely a field of numbers and the like, but deals more generally with problem-solving, logistics, probabilities, strategies, connections, and so on, and all of the problems they're given fall within these realms (we even see one of the people in the room playing chess in an early scene). Secondly, and more obviously, giving these people logic-based questions and challenges allows us to try to put our own intellects and abilities to the test rather than excluding us from the battle of wits.

The movie is presented in Spanish audio with English subtitles (there is no English audio option), and the DVD comes in a standard black case with cover artwork but no chapter insert. Also, the DVD itself is frustrating to play, as the multitude of previews that play before the menu appears can be skipped on an individual basis, but you cannot bypass them all with the "Menu" button.

While not the best DVD, the movie itself, though imperfect, is strong enough to keep your attention and even warrant multiple viewings. Thanks for reading.

Thank goodness for movie villains! I mean, really, why get caught up in the mundane crimes of real life when the big screen offers the most bizarre and intricately wrought murders imaginable? The loopy, yet fascinating, Spanish film "Fermat's Room" manages to combine all the drama of mathematics and logic puzzles with the delirious scheming of a "Saw"-like mastermind. Sounds like an unusual combination, to be sure, but that's part of the fun and insanity that make this one worth a look. "Fermat's Room," with its far-fetched plotting, may not withstand intense critical scrutiny--but if you just go with the flow, you might enjoy its simple pleasures.

As four brilliant mathematicians are invited to an exclusive and private challenge, they are unaware of the connections they share between them. Using aliases, the quartet meet nice and await an evening of mental stimulation. All is not as it seems, however, as soon the four are trapped in a locked room. But that's not the bad news! Unless they solve a continual stream of logic puzzles, the walls of the room will compress and crush them to death. I told you--only in the movies, huh? In addition to some fast and frantic puzzle solving, the participants also start to unravel their relationships and hope to identify the enigmatic madman who lured them to this certain death. And, oh yeah, they also try to escape.

I liked "Fermat's Room," I'll admit it. It isn't a great movie, by any stretch, but it is stylish entertainment. The premise is intriguing and the puzzles are fun. You can play along with many of them. They are, for the most part, logic based and many of them were quite familiar (hardly the thing to perplex geniuses--unless of course, they were getting squashed to death!). The actors are eventually what sold me on "Fermat's Room." The four principles are engaging and appealing and as the dramatic tension escalates, they all give impassioned performances. There are plenty of twists, turns, and revelations (and some bend credibility past all reason) that add to the fun quotient. Check it out if it sounds at all engaging--you might be pleasantly surprised! About 3 1/2 stars. KGHarris, 12/10.

Clever plotting and great acting. Keeps you guessing right to the final minute. Wouldn't you know such an intelligent story didn't come out of Hollywood!

There is one minor gripe I have, and it has to do with its being a Spanish production -- there is no English audio. Which is a shame because the acting is so good. While you're reading the dialog you can't examine the actor's faces. So the only way you can really appreciate the intertwining of the plotting and the characters is to see it two or more times to get the plot and dialog into your short-term memory, then watch it again so you can pay proper attention to the expressions on the actor's faces.

I'm no expert on logical puzzles, so I had no problem with the rudimentary quality of the puzzles in the film. Which I would guess goes also for the vast majority of the movie-going public.

This film would be outstanding if remade in English.

Four brilliant Mathematics virtuosi are invited to a strange room. Without knowing they will be trapped in this reduced space and comitted to anwer as fast as they can, the several proposed enigmas. In case they don't respond this questions, the room will be shortening, due a relentless and mortal mechanism.

Indescribable tension and an agile script will maintain you at the border of your seat.

Another gem that demonstrates the raising of the new Argentine cinematography.

I suppose at least partly because I had my expectations suitably lowered by the bad reviews that "Fermat's Room" received here, I actually ended up being very pleasantly surprised. The writing was much more clever than I'd been lead to believe, including a couple of very funny lines (one about a wolf and one about "the world," but I won't say more and ruin them) and a few nice twists. It wasn't the most blazingly original piece of film-making I've ever seen, but it was engaging and diverting.

To address the repeated criticism that the puzzles were of the too-familiar-for-experts variety...agreed, and if this were a documentary I would have to consider that a big issue. But this movie was made for the pleasure of the audience, and an average audience at that. For people like me who have seen some of these puzzles ad nauseum (the city of liars/city of truth-tellers one should be put to sleep by now) but still can never remember how they work (I think the hour-glass puzzle in "Room" and the water bucket puzzle in Die Hard with a Vengeance are probably the same, but for all I understand of how to solve the puzzle, it might as well be fresh each time it's presented). In other words, this movie was made for general audiences and not just mathaphiles.

But I understand the disappointment of those who come to this movie with higher expectations for a math-lover's treat. It's probably the same way I felt over the arc of the TV series, Numb3rs - The Complete First Season, which started off seeming to promise some brain candy for those of us who enjoy smart mysteries, and then quickly devolved into just one more cop show...but one in which a character was a math professor.

If you can look past that disappointment, "Fermat's Room" does offer a fairly clever mystery that seems to play fair with the viewer, and a non-American sensibility that I think puts it ahead of most of what passes for mystery and suspense coming out of Hollywood.

Fermat's Room (Luis Piedrahita and Rodrigo Sopena, 2007)

I really, really wanted to love Fermat's Room, which from the description sounded like an intriguing Spanish mix of Cube and Saw. And to some extent it is, though it contains neither the panache nor the originality of either of those movies.

The plot is simple: A guy calling himself Fermat (El Laberinto del Fauno's Federico Luppi) invites four mathematicians to a dinner in a mansion on an island in the middle of nowhere. They are Hilbert (Broken Embraces' Lluis Homar), Galois (H6: Diary of a Serial Killer's Alejo Sauras), Oliva (well-known Spanish TV actress Elena Ballesteros), and Pascal (Nobody's Perfect's Santi Millan). After dinner, Fermat is called away, but invites the four to stay and enjoy the bar. Soon after, however, they find themselves unable to get out. Fermat has left his cell phone, seemingly by accident, but it receives a text obviously meant for the group with a mathematical puzzle. When they haven't solved it in the specified time limit (one minute), the walls begin to close in on them. Suddenly, and quite obviously, all is not what it seems; how many of these mathematicians are actually strangers? Was Fermat truly the architect of this game, or is someone else lurking behind the scenes? And, above all, how are they going to get out before being crushed like bugs?

My biggest problem with the movie is my biggest problem with a lot of movies like this (and its lack is one of the things that holds Cube so near and dear to my heart): the logic puzzles that are stumping these mathematicians can be found in almost any book of logic puzzles you've ever picked up at the bookstore, not to mention a ton of puzzle-based videogames (for example, there's the old chestnut that begins "one man always tells the truth, and one man always lies..."). Pascal even calls the first one "infantile". When I heard that, I held out a little hope that the puzzles would actually get to a point where they would challenge a couple of math professors and a couple of whiz kids, but they stayed at the same level of "puzzles you work out on a lazy Saturday afternoon when you're twelve". The idea of four supposedly great minds being befuddled by these is enough to kill any shred of believability the film has.

On the other side of the coin are the things the movie does right, which in its defense is almost everything else. Aside from the rather slow setup scenes, the pace is dead-on, and the actors all perform capably (though there's one scene of unintentionally hilarious overacting from Ballesteros). If you can see your way past the pedantry of the silly puzzles, all of which you will solve long before the mathematicians do, this is a cracking little suspense film without the gore of either of its most obvious predecessors, which may make it appealing to those who avoided both because of the gore factor. In any case, if you're a fan of this sort of puzzle films, you should probably see this. Just prepare to be disappointed in the puzzles themselves. ***

The information is a patent lie this is a spanish language film not english. I seldom enjoy foreign language films as when I am tired I may fall asleep instead of reading the subtitles to keep up with the film. I feel like this information is misrepresented when it calls the film to be in english.

This movie started off alright, but soon rolled down hill... and kept rolling. The writing was cheesy and seemed like a rip-off of "Clue", and "Saw".