Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent Acting But Mysterious Plot, August 3, 2009
MARTIJN (Ryan Phillippe), a Dutch pianist and friend, travels to Morocco to help start a food program for malnourished children or so he says. Within moments of his arrival Martijn and his friend are abducted on a bus by a group of terrorists, only one of them is injected with a drug, but both are imprisoned. Do you see the mystery forming already? Under threat of death, Martinj engages in a mental chess match with AHMAT (Laurence Fishburne), trying to learn his captor's true objective and avoid death. When he fails to answer the questions that his captors are asking, they begin to cut off his fingers. Since he plays piano this is very significant. The captors seem to know all about him. How do they know so much? Is it the beautiful mysterious girlfriend that he left at home? To add to the thrill and mystery of the movie Gina Torres (Fishburne's wife in real life) enters and gives an award winning performance. First she appears to sympathize with Martijn, but then she flips and is working with Ahmat. After intense interrogation, Martijn decides to give in and writes down some information on a piece of paper. I am still in the dark because the movie ended with me not knowing if he really knew nothing or did he really know something? I enjoyed the movie. The characters were very convincing and memorable. There are several unpredictable things that happen at the end. But the one thing that did not happen was to reveal to me why he was abducted and if he was a case of mistaken identity. I searched on the internet for a revelation to the ending and found none. So kudos to the writer for such mystery in a movie. How do I feel? FRUSTRATED!
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Much better than I expected, October 23, 2009
The negative reviews made me skeptical. But the film turned out to have excellent acting and dialogue. It is all about mind games during a torture interrogation of a young Dutch lefty. Are the interrogators CIA trying to trick the guy into giving up his collaborators? They eventually drop the mystery stance and claim to be on the rebel side that he eventually claims to be on or admits to be on as the case might be. But they want him to convince them that he is really one of them by telling everything he knows. He either does not want to do that because he does not completely trust them, or he cannot as the case might be because maybe he really is lying and working for the CIA and cannot.
There are only two probable outcomes. Either they are really CIA and he should not trust his kidnappers, or he is really CIA and does not know all the people in the cell in the Netherlands. So if all the viewers guess randomly, like flip a coin, half will be right! FYI, I guessed right.
But the outcome is not so important actually to appreciation of the film as film. What is important is that the acting is very good and gripping and as details come out during the mind games and torture you want to go back and think how previous details might fit or not, and you are inspired to reinterpret some. It is a good thinking person's film. Like some of my most admired spy films.I want to watch it again even though I know the outcome. It would be like studying the moves in classic chess games, which I used to do when younger.
In terms of political relevance, yeah this is probably timely in a way. There is some nasty stuff going on out there in the world on the dark side of empire building and anger at it, including torture. And the passion and commitment on the various sides can be argued. But this is not really anything new. The political statement is not the reason that this is a fine film. But the political implications are at least provocative and may be instructive for some viewers.
The making-of feature on the DVD is not great, but it is better than the average making-of which tends to be insulting to one's intelligence and a waste of time unless you happen to be star-struck.
Five fingers refers to the fact that his passion is playing the piano and they cut off his fingers brutally one by one to turn up the heat on him as the interrogation proceeds. But this is not gratuitous gore. It is so cruel on their part and such a sacrifice on his part that even his captors (whoever they are) come to admire his courage and passion, whether he is CIA and passionately loyal to America, or a real left-wing activist who is completely determined to bring down the ruling global order. The point is well made that there is enormous passion and motivation on both sides out there on the battle lines. I think well crafted spy films often make this sort of point, but not in such a viscerally convincing and memorable way. It is such an obvious point that it is easy to say at the level of words. But making this point in convincingly human terms is very well done in this film. Exceptionally well done in my opinion.
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8 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Hit & miss torture film, deserves the good & bad press it got, July 5, 2009
Knowing this sat on the back burner for a couple years then being released within a year of Laurence Fishburne's other torture film made me worry a bit, and if you have seen the other one then this will seem like a mirror in more ways than one.
A quick synopsis of this is simply covering a terror/kidnap and torture film focusing on the anatomy in the title. Laurence plays the captor and Phillippe plays the victim. Putting aside the rightful critiques (that one can read about extensively online) regarding the horrible accents, choppy writing and poor scene mixing, you might get some light entertainment from this. I was not a fan of anything in the film until the final three plot twists given to us in the last two minutes. I would have to say it might leave a better feeling with you once you know why the accents sucked, why they were writing the film towards a known conclusion and what the greater good is (supposedly) being protected here.
The supplements are weak and do not give this a higher rating. The making-of is 11 minutes long and is entirely about how incredible everyone is to be around (my least favorite kind of supplement). The trivia track could be played on the first watch as this is not a re-watchable film and the trivia is inconsequential to the film. This appeared to be a passion piece by those involved, and the interview supplements highlight how they felt this was a statement film for "what is going on today."
Summary: Not great but not bad either, the sound and picture clarity are adequate and the violence all happens off screen regarding the removal of digits.
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