Kovak Box, The
 DJ Hufford  rates it:    Community rates it: (no ratings yet)
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This film bills itself as a mystery, and tries really really hard to follow in the footsteps of such classic mindbenders as “Pi” and “The Game”. The director makes a feeble attempt at creating a Hitchcockian thriller, but he fails in almost every way.

As the movie begins we meet Timothy Hutton. He plays a science fiction writer who flies to some tropical resort for a Science Fiction conference. During said conference, he proposes to his girlfriend. His girlfriend then prepares herself for some wild sex with her new fiancé. Suddenly the phone rings. She answers, and she promptly throws herself out a window. WTF?

At the same time across town, a woman whose background is never explained gets the same phone call. She promptly throws herself out the window as well. The difference here is that she lands on a street awning, and suffers zero damage. She does go to the hospital however, and she meets the sci-fi writer grieving over his dead fiancé.

Obviously neither the fiancé nor the other woman was suicidal, so whatever occurred on the phone call prompted them to do it. Problem is, she doesn’t remember the call at all. Of course nobody in the town believes them that something sinister is going on, and they're left to solve the mystery themselves.

Along the way we discover that twenty five years prior, the science fiction writer wrote a novel called Gloomy Sunday. In this work of fiction, it is proposed that the government implants chips in every human at birth. As that person grows older, should they become a dissident or give the government trouble in any way, they can force them to kill themselves. The problem here is the government read his book, thought it was a good idea, and made it a reality. Thus we spend the rest of the film trying to figure out who exactly is responsible for this mess.

This is one of the most convoluted complex confusing stories I have ever watched. The plot is just absolutely so far fetched it should have been labeled as Sci-Fi instead of a mystery. The characters don’t make you feel any emotion whatsoever and you don’t really care if they live or die. I spent most of time on this film watching the clock wondering when it was ever going to end. It was flat out boring. There was very little action and lots and lots of pointless dialogue. I in no way cared whether the main characters solved the mystery or not. It had no intensity.

The acting was fairly decent, but that was about it. I don’t think they could have made this movie any better, because they didn’t have much to work with to begin with. It seems as though this may have been a good idea when it was first proposed, but then everyone who touched it after that point proceeded to ruin it. This was a complete waste of time.

Added:  Wednesday, April 25, 2007

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