Rating: Unrated, but contains violence and profanity.
First of all, I am so SICK of all the comparisons to SAW???!!! I totally get the comparisons to RESERVOIR DOGS, MEMENTO, and THE USUAL SUSPECTS but come on, SAW is a horror movie with a bunch of gore and mindless torture. This movie is NOT anywhere near that realm, so STOP already!!!
We are thrown immediately into the action and mystery as five men, all of them to remain nameless until the time for their unveilings comes, wake up from a stupor, and cannot remember anything about themselves.
One man, the first to awaken, wears a jean jacket, and scurries around trying to wake up/assist his four companions. One man is bound to a chair. Another lays facedown in a pool of blood, and another is handcuffed high above the rest of them. A fifth man appears shortly later, clad in a Rancher Shirt, gagging with nausea. In fact, all five men are deathly ill for some reason. Two of them are severely injured. The man laying facedown has a broken nose. Handcuffed Man has been shot in the chest/shoulder and looks like he is fading fast.
Immediately they try to piece together their puzzle, and the plot is pretty intricate and if you're the least bit distracted, you will lose track of what is happening. One by one the men come to, and a few of them quickly deduce that they won't ge getting along too well. Broken Nose is suspicious and curt to everyone from the first. The Bound Man spends most of his time screeching at everyone to untie him, and getting mega-pissed when he ignored. Jean Jacket tries his best to free Handcuffed Man, and only is able to make him (a precious little bit) more comfortable.
They discover that they are locked in some dingy abandoned building in the middle of no man's land. As they assess their injuries or wash up, the men look into the mirror and bits and pieces of memory come to them. One of them finds a newspaper article that both interests and frightens the amnesiac prisoners. Desperate to learn the truth about what has gone down, the men conspire, betray, and feebly try to win each other's confidences. Two men named Cole and McCain have been abducted, the newspaper says. That means only two of these five men are truly victims, while three are actually evil underneath the haze of muddled memory.
Some of the dialogues can come across as a bit hokey at first glance, especially when Pepper's character is trying to keep Caviezel's character encouraged. Some of the editing and writing are a wee bit choppy and shaky, but after my second viewing of the movie, things made more sense and seemed smoother.
It doesn't necessarily unfold in reverse quite the same way as MEMENTO did, but there are lots of flashbacks, and all the answers lie within those flashbacks. There is a "whodunit" element like in THE USUAL SUSPECTS, and a crime-caper gone terribly opposite of what was planned, and lot of arguing and bickering in a claustrophobic warehouse setting like DOGS. I'd like to add that there is a certain plot twist in this story that struck me as similar to SUICIDE KINGS, but I won't give it away, except that the whole thing was one surprise after another and that you never know who is the true mastermind of an evil plot.
Barry Pepper, Jim Caviezel, Joe Pantoliano, Jeremy Sisto, Greg Kinnear and Peter Stormare all give nice performances. Jeremy's role is probably the smallest of the main five characters, but he makes the most of things. I enjoyed how he reacted to Pantoliano's character's bumbling in that scene where the two realized that a gun was within reach.
I didn't like one critic criticizing Handcuffed Man's scene where he was relating a childhood story about nearly drowning during a storm. I liked the scene, even if only because it indicated, above all else, that the character was about to die. People say very strange and seemingly insignificant things before they die. Handcuffed Man was a character that wasn't as developed as the other four, so the scene added something to the dimension.
The story is intriguing and definitely impossible to predict outcome wise.
At first some might wonder why 5 guys would suffer memory loss to such an extreme. I thought the idea was farfetched when I first heard about the film, but it's believable here being that the memory loss doesn't last thru the whole movie, and that it was caused by some inhaled toxin.
All in all a very good film. Forget the idiotic comparisons to SAW and just give it a try. It's a solid 9 out of 10 at least.
CAST
Jim Caviezel as JEAN JACKET
Greg Kinnear as BROKEN NOSE
Bridget Moynahan as MRS. COLES
Joe Pantoliano as BOUND MAN
Barry Pepper as RANCHER SHIRT
Jeremy Sisto as HANDCUFFED MAN
Peter Stormare as SNAKESKIN BOOTS
Directed by Simon Brand
From ElevenEleven Films
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