Customer Reviews

The Triangle

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(23)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Billionaire and shipping mogul Eric Benirall (Sam Neil)contacts four people (Eric Stoltz, Bruce Davidson, Catherine Bell and Michael Rodgers)with expertise in different from psychic ability to weather conditions with one skeptical reporter in the mix to discover why his ships keeping disappearing in the Sargasso Sea or the Bermuda Triangle. When a 747 goes down into the area and they investigate they discover the plane looks like its been submerged for fifty or sixty years. When they come back from the region they begin having strange experiences suggesting that reality has somehow been altered for them.

A fun diversion, "The Triangle" comes with a good pedigree; it's written by Rockne O'Bannon who created "Farscape" based on a story by O'Bannon, Bryan Singer (director of "The X-Men", "Superman Returns" and "The Usual Suspects")and Dean Devlin (co-producer and writer of "Independence Day" and "Stargate"). These three come up with a unique story that is an involving and fascinating puzzle.

Lion's Gate has the mini-series on two discs with a play all feature for the episodes. There's also a promotional featurette that ran on the Sci-Fi Channel included. The extras are disappointing to say the least with no commentary track, no featurettes on the production (outside of the promo one)or the visual effects on the show. The image quality of the series is top notch throughout most of the set although some of the night scenes could have used a bit more contrast.

Overall this is a fine mini-series with some top notch performances that recalls "The X-Files" in terms of the strong plotting and mystery. While the second episode felt stretched a bit the show is an entertaining diversion. This is a terrific set despite the lack of extras and well worth watching if you're a science fiction or fantasy fan.

I rented Triangle of a whim at a local video store. Honestly, I exopected it to be a flop. Most sci-fi projects have a huge cheese factor, or are full of bad acting. The Triangle was anything but bad.

The acting was incredible, the plotting was strong, the characters were three dimensional, the special effects engaging, and the story? Well, the story was good enough to turn well worn ground (The Bermuda Triangle) into a fresh delight.

I highly recommend this mini-series.

Good mini series from the sci-fi channel. What elevates this offering is the cast. Take all the movies about the Bermuda Triangle and squeeze them together and you have the plot. This show may have gotten 5 stars if the plot lines were thinned down a bit and the remaining expanded. All in all it is a fun thing to watch. It can definitely spark the dorm room bull session with the right company of viewers, those who believe or would like to believe in things beyond our perception. If you think the triangle is just a load, skip it. The rest of us, enjoy.

Wow! I can't believe anyone would give this less than 5 stars. The acting is fantastic (great cast!), the storyline is plausible, thrilling and action-packed. The special effects are insane (and there's more of them here than in X-men 2!)And the scientific quality of the movie is way above par for most sci-fi films of the last decade! Basically everyone involved is awesome.
Let me add another element here too. I have studied the Bermuda Triangle most of my life. I know all the theories, and this series manages to touch on all of them, while creating an entirely new and unpredictable explanation for the phenomena. The idea is highly unlikely naturally, but fascinating. It may help to be familiar with the subject so to speak, but even without, this is a mind-bending event. There are a plethora of paradoxes that work, ironies and events that are recurrent enough to keep everything tight and consistent. I think for anyone paying attention, this is a cinematic event that pays the viewer well for their time. In fact, as a huge cinemaphile, i think this mini-series is the best thing i've seen all year. Certainly better than any of the recycled drivel Hollywood had pumped out.
If you like action, solid acting, good cinematography, tight special effects, or any of the other elements that make watching a movie worthwhile, I highly recommend investing the 4 plus hours to see this. To Bryan Singer and Dean Devlin, thank you! I've been missing real science fiction!

It wasn't overly apparent at the time, but 2005 is quickly becoming a year known for its primetime science fiction television. Don't take my words for it- you could sit down and watch Lost, Surface, Invasion, Threshold, and The 4400 without having to endure a single rerun. SyFy, back then the SciFi Channel, understood that the world at large was suddenly celebrating what was supposed to be their niche and came out swinging with a miniseries created by and starring some serious heavy hitters.

Enter The Triangle, a 255-minute picture that reads like a Hollywood blockbuster rather than a made-for-television miniseries. Written by the powerhouse trifecta Bryan Singer (of the first two X-Men films, Superman Returns and the upcoming Battlestar Galactica film), Dean Devlin (Independence Day and Stargate), and living legend Rockne O'Bannon (Farscape and Alien Nation), the production crew was certainly taking no shorts. The cast, it would turn out, would be no less qualified to deliver the goods.

The story centers on billionaire shipping magnate Eric Benirall (played perfectly by Jurassic Park's Sam Neill) who has a record of losing ships in the Bermuda Triangle. In addition to the resulting financial loss, he begins experiencing troubling hallucinations. Having enough with the mystery, he assembles a motley group of "experts" to provide a reasonable explanation for the mysteries haunting the Bermuda Triangle for centuries.

This team consists of tabloid reporter Howard Thomas (Eric Stoltz) a skeptic who only takes the assignment to help make his alimony payments; engineer and overeducated Emily Patterson (played by JAG's Catherine Bell); Stan Lathem (Bruce Davison) a struggling psychic; thrill seeker and Hugh Jackman wannabe Bruce Geller (Michael Rodgers); and finally Greenpeace commando Meeno Paloma (Lou Diamond Phillips) who returns from a disastrous trip through the triangle only to discover that reality is not how he remembers it.

So where does The Triangle succeed amidst a swarm of science fiction competition? Surprisingly, in its pacing. While a majority of the shows mentioned above were structured as ongoing dramas, The Triangle finds itself neither stretched out across twenty-two episodes nor compressed to fit into the 2-hour timeslot of a motion picture. Instead, thanks to the miniseries format, it fits neatly between the two extremes with a runtime of roughly five-hours. In other words, while movies often feel rushed and series tend to stretch out endlessly, The Triangle manages to capture the best of both worlds in its structure and this shows in viewing through brisk pacing and well-developed characters.

The 2-disc DVD set breaks the production down into the first two chapters of the series on the first disc and the final chapter on the second. The second disc also includes a promotion spot originally aired on SyFy with interviews with the cast and crew and some light behind-the-scenes information. It also contains several Lions Gate trailers ranging in genre from horror to dedicated science fiction.

The plot itself is pretty darn spot-on as well, with links and references that tie the Bermuda Triangle phenomena back to Christopher Columbus's famous trip across the ocean-blue on up to the Naval experiments of the 1940s (including the infamous Philadelphia Experiment).

The story works off the canvas created by shows like X-Files and Outer Limits in that the day to day tribulations of the lead characters is used as the catalyst to establish a much larger mystery. And while calling some of the inscrutabilities here spooky may be overdoing it, in truth the presentation of the phenomena requiring investigation is done surprisingly well. Sometimes in sci-fi less is more, and in this case, the filmmakers wisely combine slick visuals with just enough intrigue to let the viewer's imagination take hold to fill in the blanks.

The picture is nearly flawless, in my opinion anyway, throughout the first two sections but only drops the ball a bit in the third and final chapter. The science is certainly plausible and the plot structure builds itself up into a nice appropriate fever pitch by the end, but the second half of the final segment is definitely the most "Hollywood" of the whole production. Some of the concluding explanations could have been ironed out a bit better and the actual finale itself leaves viewers not entirely sure if the overall experience was satisfying through and through. Perhaps the third part of the miniseries is the weakest simply because it is the only one of the segments that manages to hint toward the rush and tight scheduling that shooting on a television schedule implies.

In all, I found The Triangle to be an entirely enjoyable ride despite some slight shortcomings. The talent that contributed to this miniseries is evident throughout and a testament to the fact that amazing things are possible, even on a television budget, when enthusiastic individuals bring their enthusiasm to the table. And unlike many of the other hit science fiction television programs that saw the light of day in 2005, The Triangle ends conclusively; it's tough to put a value on the closure one finds in following along with a show that wasn't cancelled on an unresolved cliffhanger.

You do roll the dice with the Sci-Fi Channel when it comes to their made-for-television movies. Mostly, you come up snake eyes. But, every now and then, you land a seven. THE TRIANGLE is one of the good ones, and the hefty budget shows up on screen. THE TRIANGLE features a cast of familiar names. The writing/producing pedigree is solid, what with Bryan Singer and Dean Devlin having co-conspired with the crafting of the story. Teleplay credit goes to Rockne O'Bannon.

This mini-series ran for three nights and goes for an epic near four and a half hours, which is a lot of bathroom breaks for a decrepit old bloke like me. I don't think there's anyone out there not clued in to the Bermuda Triangle mystique, and certainly there's familiar terrain covered in this sci-fi thriller. But Singer, Devlin, and O'Bannon keep things interesting and pace the story well. The key lies in the first episode of the mini-series, whether it hooks you in. It sets up the plot, creates a genuinely gripping air of mystery, and introduces the five core actors. By the end of this opening chapter, you're either tantalized and willing to follow these five characters or you don't tune in the next night.

A shipping magnate contracts four experts in various fields to investigate why his cargo vessels are mysteriously vanishing in the Sargasso Sea, known more notoriously as the Bermuda Triangle, site of abrupt disappearances of uncountable ships and souls down the centuries. A deep ocean resource engineer (Catherine Bell), a maverick meteorologist (Michael Rodgers), a psychic (Bruce Davison), and a tabloid journalist (Eric Stoltz) all jump at the chance to make five million dollars each, and there's a thought that perhaps all they would have to do is amass a wealth of mumbo-jumbo facts and engage in double speak and dazzle the shipping magnate and, in that manner, earn their sexy paychecks. Except that things abruptly get X-FILES-y. It's not long before the quartet are fully engaged, thoughts of paychecks shoved to the back of the mind. Getting a peek at things beyond the ken of man will do that.

We also get a running perspective from a survivor (Lou Diamond Phillips) of yet another baffling phenomena in the Sargasso Sea, and in a lot of ways Meeno Paloma's is the most personal story arc. Meeno returns home after a hospital stint only to find that little things aren't adding up, which eventually leads to big things not adding up. It begins with a wrong-colored truck and escalates to the appearance of a young son who didn't before exist.

No one escapes the Bermuda Triangle's spooky influence. Our four investigators eventually begin suffering hallucinations, or what they believe are hallucinations but are actually windows into alternate realities. Ultimately, the fate of the world rests on their and on Meeno Paloma's ability to solve the riddle of the Bermuda Triangle. And, then, at the end of it, there's the epilogue which plays out nicely, which deals with the fallout of our characters' actions. There's a balance in how the characters' fortunes have changed, some for the better, some not so much. Just like you roll the dice when you tune in to a Sci-Fi Channel program, you do the same when you eff around with the space/time continuum.

Government conspiracy. Crazy military experiments. Warped realities. Time travel. A race against time. The Niña, the Pinta, the Santa Maria... The Devil's Triangle is bounded by its three points: Miami, Bermuda, and San Juan. It encompasses 14,000 square miles. Surely, within those desolate, sprawling confines, a lot of things are possible. Including Eric Stoltz and Lou Diamond Phillips anchoring the film with their rather terrific acting. So, good performances, excellent production values, a script that engages and is taut and doesn't insult your intelligence. What? Is this, like, a revolutionary formula for the Sci-Fi Channel?

I am a very senior citizen and did not have high expectations for this story, which I got practically free at clearance sale, along with about 30 other DVD's. I felt that over the years, I've been Bermuda Triangled to death--fiction, non-fiction, films, TV shows, etc.

And while "The Triangle" has many flaws, I nonetheless found it very entertaining. I have a short attention span, yet I watched the show in its entirety in one sitting. For pure fantasy and escape, I'd recommend it.

This miniseries has to do with the different type of triangle. The type that I am familiar with as a former visitor to Georgia's Buford triangle formed by the intersection of I-985 and I-85. Here drivers can get lost for hours and when they emerged they seem to be hours older.

Shipping tycoon Eric Benirall (Sam Neill) has been losing ships and we suspect more than that. So he puts together an unlikely team of obscure experts to try and figure out what has been happing to his ships. He offers each 5 million dollars or nothing. The team consists of Howard Gregory Thomas (Eric Stoltz) a reporter for the Observer, Stan Lathem (Bruce Davison) a psychic, Emily Myredith Patterson (Catherine Bell), a Deep ocean resource engineer, and Bruce Geller (Michael E. Rodgers) a professor of meteorology.

Together with the help of victims such as Meeno Paloma (Lou Diamond Phillips) a Greenpeace save the wails activist. And using some firsthand experience they try to fathom the problem and may have discovered something more sinister.

If you are a Sam Neill fan then a must see is Reilly - Ace of Spies ~ Sam Neill

THE TRIANGLE was originally a tv movie shown in three parts. The DVD has two discs so if you choose you could split your viewings instead of viewing the whole four hours at once. I did the latter and while there are some interesting variations on the Bermuda Triangle theories, there are spots that drag and the plot sometimes gets a little muddled. A tie in with the Philadelphia Experiment is intriguing, but the subplot with Lou Diamond Phillips seems superfluous; excluding his character might have tightened up the film somewhat. Eric Stoltz, Bruce Davison, Sam Neill, Catherine Bell and Michael Rodgers do well in their leading role with Scottish actor Rodgers standing out in his roguish role. The special effects are a little shoddy at times and the musical score tends to overwhelm the dialogue on occasion, but if you stick with it, you'll end up enjoying it.

Typical for its type, a premise based on junk science: experts in an enormous underwater complex are seeking to repair a rift that they may or may not have caused, which could be the Bermuda Triangle, or maybe it's a worm hole, or a crux event, The Philadelphia Experiment, but definitely not aliens, could be electro-magnetic in nature....or just plain old exotic matter. At any rate, all these scientists/experts are dead wrong but 4 ninnies hired by a wacky billionaire have the answer....don't do anything!
They lost me after the first episode. I hung on till the bitter end only because I was curious to see how they would wrap things up. Sad to say, the story deteriorates into a spate of bad weather and an even worse explanation. And yes, the word "exponentially" was used (basically, because it's THE term that has to be applied in every sci-fi crisis....meaning, things get worse).
I will say I liked all the actors involved and don't fault them or their performances; they did wonders with this pseudo-sci-fi muck. They were the only reason I kept watching. However, I won't be wasting 255 minutes to watch this again: not a keeper.