Tape

Shot on DV in one night at 'Tape' makes the viewer feel like a voyeur peeking into a motel room. It's set in a motel room where two friends reunite after 10 years (ironically Hawke and Leonard also appear together on screen more than a decade after their last film 'Dead Poet's Society') and have a private conversation that turns from the common catching up to unravelling secrets. The entire movie is pretty much a conversation but it is a layered film with layered characters. The writing is brilliant. The editing it very tight. As the events unfold with clever twists, it becomes an intense human drama and a thrilling experience for the audience. While we are provided with sufficient background information on Amy and Jon, Vince remains somewhat of a mystery. His intentions remain for the viewer to interpret as there are hints that point in different directions. The hand-held camera mostly acts as hidden camera that lures the viewer to look into a private moment of these three character's lives. The swirling camera actually acts like a person itself, who's just sitting there while no one is aware of its presence. Once Linklater builds the tension, he sustains it and keeps the viewer engaged right through the end. Being a conversational piece, it relies strongly on acting. The performances are solid. Ethan Hawke does a fine job of the (drug-induced) hyper but manipulative Vince. His character may be a bit ambiguous but he plays the part to the T. Robert Sean Leonard is adequate but in some places he seems a little lost. However, after Uma Thurman's entry, he is remarkable. Uma Thurman looks sensational with simple makeup. This is one actress who can look very plain when needed and supersexy when required. Her acting is excellent as she puts the pieces together while cleverly blindfolding the audience allowing them to figure out what happened. While some people may feel confused at the end, it is very thought-provoking movie as one would try to figure out the puzzle. On the whole, 'Tape' takes us into a different territory that only a few Hollywood films have done. It has some great performances, good direction, brilliant writing and will very likely keep you glued to the screen.

This movie is a complete waste of time. Three high school friends reunite to bring up past relationships that each person has a different recollection of. It's a convoluted script that should never had made it to the silver screen. Shame on Uma Turman & Ethan Hawke for agreeing to film this. As for the executive at the production company that felt this should have been made into a movie, I'm sure he/she was fired after they saw the final clip...Ughhh!

The moment the credits were finishing rolling on my rented VHS copy of TAPE last night, I immediately rewound it and watched the movie through til the end a second time. It's that good. With this experimental and brilliantly realized piece, Richard Linklater proves he's no 'slacker' but rather a cunning force to be reckoned with in the movie world. Based on a play which takes place in one room with only 3 characters, you will either love or hate this movie - it's an all-or-nothing proposition, plain and simple. I recommend you get your hands on it, get extremely, ahem, RELAXED and find out which category it falls in for you.

Richard Linklater's new film, "Tape" is the most jarring film of his career. The film takes place entirely in a hotel room in Michigan where the main character, Vince, (played by Ethan Hawke),is downing two beers at once. He is waiting for the arrival of his old friend, John, (Robert Sean Leonard), an indie film-maker whose new film is playing at a local film-festival. Vince's motivations for seeing John have less to do with seeing his friend again and more to do with confronting him about an incident which happened when they were younger. Apparently, back in their high school days, John raped a woman named Amy, (played by Uma Thurman). Amy was Vince's ex-girlfriend and someone whom both men are still infactuated with. However, the story is less about the somewhat ambiguous question over whether or not John raped Amy and more about these two characters and their lack of control over their lives. If any character in a Richard Linklater film can be described as a loser, it's Vince. He drinks beer, smokes pot and snorts coke throughout the entire movie. He is a drug-dealer who deludes himself that he also has a legitimate job, and therefore control over his life, as a volunteer fire-fighter. John, on the other hand, seemingly has more control over his life, but that's only because he deals with his shattered ego internally while Vince deals with it externally. John has a dream job - a young up and coming film director whose movie is playing at a film-festival. And yet, he is terribly dissatisfied with his life. He tells Vince that the film festival is only showing his film once in the afternoon and that it is only a small film-festival, anyway. One gets the feeling that the only reason why John hangs out with a guy like Vince is to feel secure in his own existence. He only seems relaxed wheh he tells Vince that he should get a life. Two-thirds of the way through the movie, Amy herself makes an appearance in the hotel room. And it is then that we realize that all this time she has been merely a pawn in these mens' lives to allow them to feel they were in control of their own lives. Whether or not John raped Amy or merely had violent concentual sex with her, that situation was all about the self-conscious John feeling that he was controling someone else since he couldn't control his own life. And Vince's defence of Amy's honor has more to do with the fact that Amy never went all the way with him and John did. As it turns out Amy is the only one who has any control over her life. And, subsequently it is she who uses these two men as a kind of revenge at the way they have been using her. This is a very daring and extremely unconventional film which will have a hard time finding an audience. Certainly, it will not be for everyone. Visually, it is far different from any film Linklater has made in the past. In films like "Before Sunrise" and "SubUrbia", Linklater's camera was brilliantly unobtrusive, enabling us to quietly observe these charcters and what makes them tick, with Linklater never drawing attention to the camera. In "Tape", on the other hand, the viewer feels like a voyeur intruding on something that has nothing to do with them - the way Amy herself probably feels when watching these two men. And the camera is constantly drawing attention to itself to the point where it's actually distracting and even infuriating. If the sight of people talking in previous Linklater films felt inviting, this feels more like an uncomfortable situation you can't get out of.

This film is not bad because it's just a conversation or because it's done with cheap camera equipment. And as such or because of it, it isn't boring. Actually, these are the only positive things about this film and they might even stimulate more people to make films like this, technically. Now, for what is bad and abominable: Vince, a loser in American society, comes together with two friends from college. Actually, the meeting is something that Vince seems to have been planning for ages because it's five to ten years since he seen any of his old friends. From this we can gather that there is a big trauma for him involving his two friends. As it turns out, Vince dated Amy but she wouldn't pull out and Vince broke off the relationship. His reason was obviously not because Amy was saving it for after marriage and therefore instead thought that he was unloved by Amy and so broke off a relationship that probably only served to strengthen Amy's self-esteem and nothing else. This seemed to be especially obvious, since Amy later got together with Jon, the other friend, and had sex with him. Vince did however suspect coercion from Jon's side for being able to sleep with Amy. How old that suspicion is, we do not know but we can suspect that Amy's rejection has hurt Vince deeply and now he wants to know for sure what happened. It is true, that we never clearly know why Amy did not want to have sex but just as she later claims that what Jon did was not rape (although we know that he has admitted it on tape), we can assume that she did not tell Vince that she was saving it for marriage, which he might have respected. We do not even know that Vince knew that she was a virgin and maybe she wasn't! As it all turns out and the reason for why this film is fascistic is that Vince, a loser in society, started out his voyage in life by being exploited by both Amy and Jon, without understanding it fully but vaguely suspecting it. In the end of the film, he is left after being fooled to waste all his capital in form of drugs and both Amy and Jon are comparably triumphant. To top this, Vince are supposed to feel sorry for breaking off with Amy, who just used him and obviously felt nothing for him, not then and not now, since she fools him into losing a lot of money, when it is obvious that he does not have so much of that stuff. Bottom line: Two winners in society triumphs over a poor loser - just as it should be in any fascistic state.

I caught this movie the other day on cable, and I had absolutely no expectations. That is usually a good thing, as I'm rarely disappointed by a movie when watching it with that attitude. However, Tape didn't just disappoint me, it wasted my time. I've watched 'Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach' with a better reaction than this pompous load of nonsense. I'm not a big fan of some of the movies in which Ethan Hawke and Robert Sean Leonard have participated (which began upon my viewing the ultra-depressing Dead Poets Society), but both actors have made movies I've enjoyed ('Gattaca' and 'In the Gloaming' top the list of favorites), and they are very talented actors. Uma Thurman almost always pleasantly surprises me, especially in 'The Truth About Cats & Dogs.' In fact, she was the most positive factor in this film full of negatives. The actors gave a good effort, but the material is sadly lacking. It was one of those movies you keep watching...HOPING that it will get better. Unfortunately, it doesn't get better. It doesn't do much of anything. I found this movie to be tedious, pretentious, and really quite tiresome. It had a rather claustrophobic feel to it (most likely on purpose), and the characters didn't seem to be well developed. Tape tried to have its share of twists, but they seemed scattered, ill-conceived, and not particularly compelling. The bouncy back-and-forth camerawork in one scene felt akin to having gone on a Tilt-a-Whirl and personally left me with a splitting headache. Good concept, poor execution. In conclusion, there are a lot better ways to spend 86 minutes. My advice is to find one of them instead of watching this movie.

I rented Tape purely on the (supposed) strength of the players. Unfortunately my patience wore very thin with one hour of inane dialogue that even fast forwarding didn't improve! Uma is beautiful as always though!

Despite the fact that this film looks like it has been shot with a 500 dollar budget it is very worth while. Of course Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke are somewhat famous actors, but they are not necessarily famous for their great acting skills. Yet in this cheap production, that has no tricks whatsoever to distract you from bad performances both are able to stand tall, as is Rovert Sean Leonard. Sure the film takes a bit getting used to, especially in the beginning when the actors have almost nothing to work with, but in the end the actors are what carries the film and they do so in a grandiose fashion. Some part of the credit has to go to the great dialog as well though, since the words that are spoken are able to grab you by the throat and keep you interested in figuring out what truth lies behind the talk. Nothing Linklater did was too spectacular, so I am sure any director could have pulled this one, but since Linklater was the one I must give him credit (and the rest of the cast and crew) for making such a good film. 8 out of 10

This was a horrid movie to watch, I was constantly squirming in my seat just waiting for something eventful to happen...but relief never came. If I wanted nothing but dialogue I'd listen to a book on tape. Linklater let me down with this one, as a fan of subURBIA and Waking Life. Generally in a movie something is at stake when the conflict arises but NOTHING here. Just emotional blither blather. If you're looking for a movie that you can put on and walk out of the room for 30 minutes and still manage to keep up, this is for you.

When it starts, Tape seems like a very unprofessional, student film and I was expecting not to like it - but by the time it's reached it's conclusion, Richard Linklater's talky little drama has hit all the right notes and, despite the fact that this is simply three actors spending 85 minutes in one location; Linklater has done what he did with Before Sunrise, and proved that great dialogue is enough to make a film great. Of course, he didn't write this film, and that honour goes to Stephen Belber, whose play this film is based on. The dialogue itself is brilliant, and it's constantly fascinating to see how the characters are built up through what they say. Although we don't know anything about these characters before the film starts, by the end we know about them just through their dialogue, which shows the thought that has been put into everything the characters say. The plot is deliciously simple, which gives all of the characters room to expand and interact with each other. Basically, what we have here is two high school friends that meet up in a motel room for the first time in ten years. While there, they discuss the darker areas of their time together at school Of course, for this film to work, good actors are a definite must have; and this film definitely has them! Ethan Hawke massively impressed in Linklater's Before Sunrise, and he does so again here, albeit in a totally different way. The character he has been given here is much harder to like than his one in Linklater's masterpiece, but Hawke shows his worth as an actor by brilliantly stepping into the role, and giving his character a definite grounding in realism. His co-stars, Robert Sean Leonard and Uma Thurman give similar portrayals, and the ensemble helps to make the film what it is. What makes films like Tape great is their ambiguity. Many of the things that the characters say can be interpreted in different ways, and most people will have different ideas as to why certain characters say certain things. The story behind the immediate goings on is well orchestrated, and even though nothing that the characters are talking about is shown; it's still easy to picture it. What happens in the hotel room is also very well executed, and the playwright has made sure that his story is never boring. Linklater's use of the camera is good, with the swirling angles creating a claustrophobic feel within the small confines of the hotel room. Tape is the sort of film that can be analysed in all different ways, and that gives it infinite rewatch value and when the material is this good; rewatching can only be a pleasure.