The Tesseract

In Bangkok, in a low-budget hotel called "Heaven", the fate of four guests are interconnected due to a theft in a room: Sean (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers), a paranoid English drug dealer, that is dealing with a powerful local drug lord; the also British psychologist Rosa (Saskia Reeves), who is grieving the loss of her son and making a research with poor children in Thailand; a seriously wounded killer, hired to kill the mobster; and Wit (Alexander Rendel), a thirteen years old abused bellboy, that steals the guests. In the end, we see that it is almost impossible to control life, and sometimes, a subtle incident may lead to fatality. I did not find the word "Tesseract" in Webster or American Heritage Dictionary, but in internet, I found that it would be a 4-dimensional cube. The explanation of this word is also provided in the introduction of the movie. Using this concept with four characters in a hotel, reducing to three and converging to one, the screenplay writer wrote a very original and intriguing story, apparently based on a book, confused in the first twenty minutes since it is non-linear, but attractive when the viewer understands the plot. I believe that watching for the second time, this film would be better and better, and that is my intention in a near future. I liked the idea of how difficult would be to control our destiny, which is connected and affected by the actions of other people. Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Alexander Rendel and Saskia Reeves give great performances. I really recommend this movie to audiences that like a dark and different story. My vote is seven. Title (Brazil): "No Limite da Realidade" ("In the Limit of Reality")

Oxide Pang -- one-half the Pang Brothers -- directs THE TESSERACT, a stylish, hyper-kinetic tale of good folks gone bad -- kinda/sorta -- in this kinda/sorta good-to-great film thriller. By utilizing flashbacks, flashforwards, and ... erm ... flash-sidles (if there can be such a thing), Oxide Pangs crafts his film together more as an experiment in narrative voice, but he pretty much confides in this technique for the involved set-up of these four disparate folks: a drug dealer trying to score a big delivery; a comely psychologist trying to come to terms with the death of her young son; a professional assassin (can you ever have just one?!?!); and a thirteen-year-old thief who misunderstands the concepts of right and wrong. These four folks all converge on a hotel where their lives criss and cross as dramatically staged flybys and near-misses ... but, come the conclusion of the film, they collide with devastating results. In a style very reminiscent of their earlier work, BANGKOK DANGEROUS, half-a-Pang flashes quick visuals with unusual camera angles almost universally throughout TESSERACT. However, some of the visuals pull the viewer away from the story a bit much, so the effectiveness of the technique -- perhaps a further study in it so far as Oxide is concerned -- is arguably debatable ... but the film's atmosphere is not. You can almost smell the decay when you're drenched with the seedier parts of the city, finding yourself quite possibly as repulsed as you are captivated by the events. Think of Oxide Pang's work as very Spielbergian in terms of tone and lighting, but with healthy parts of Scorsese thrown in to propel the narration. Well-paced except for a few awkward moments early one where technique clearly outdistances the story, this slick glossy still makes for quality & interesting viewing ... but, as for shelf life, it might have a short life except for fans of the Pang Brothers and/or experimental films.

i thought that the movie was well made! i love how everything came together even though the ending was pretty surprising to me at least!! the flashbacks made the movie even better...i thought that some parts were confusing but everything clears up!! this movie was really good! Jonathan Rhys-Meyers did very well in this movie and i thought that he made his part come alive.......everyone did the same thing as well! the director definitely picked a great cast for this movie. the ending made the movie more real for me i don't know how to explain it but it just did! well that is what i thought of this movie and i hope that helps you decide to see it or not!

Alex Garland is an awesome writer. The Beach novel was great; the movie threw away everything good about it, including the essence of the main characters, and predictably sucked. 28 Days was pretty fun. Haven't read the Tesseract book, but this movie's pretty bad. Pacing's bad, acting's bad, script is bad. Some of the early visual sequences were done really well, but I hate it when directors use visual type camera effects and pulp-fiction or boomtown type chronology as their MAIN arsenal to grab people's attention, to try to make it look hip. Like another reviewer mentioned, it's not like these things weren't already used in several movies. Couldn't finish the movie. I wonder if Garland was happy that his novel was connected to this film?

Trailer—The Tesseract