Upon witnessing a crime, he doesn't commit, Jack Starks, a young courageous and intelligent war veteran, has sent to a mental institution, where he becomes the mouse test for a doctor's experiment, the thing that turns upside down his life.
A solid attempt to wrestle with some big questions. The cast is exemplary and the premise and script are well reasoned and artful. But it doesn't quite come together.
Common Sense Media
December 28, 2010
Smart thriller is for mature older teens only.
Ebert & Roeper
March 07, 2005
It just bounces Brody back and forth in time and yanks us around, and around, and around.
Long Island Press
May 29, 2007
There's nothing wrong with a little vicarious experience when you go to the movies, but the director seems to think that his supernatural psycho thriller has to drive you crazy, just to get what it's like to be really insane.
Toronto Star
March 04, 2005
It suffers from a common thriller syndrome these days: the desire to explain away madness with logic.
Here, Maybury is just arty for art's sake, filming entire scenes in close-ups so big that viewers leave the theater knowing way more than they ever wanted to about the lead actors' bridgework.
Pic begins as a potentially intriguing study of the depersonalizing effects of warfare, only to end up a pastiche of time-travel and psycho-ward movie cliches.
Tadjenin seems to draw inspiration from two books: "10 ways to copy 12 Monkeys" --a far inferior read to "10 ways to write 12 Monkeys"-- and "Common Sense: A Stranger"
