We then cut to a bright white box and realise that the budget has been spent on that big flag the bloke was waving. A woman wakes up in said box and starts conversing with a distorted voice - ‘where am I?’ ‘who are you?’ ‘can I get my money back?’. After some cruel treatment via the box’s handy hot and cold floor, the true horror slowly dawns on us - will the whole film just be a woman yelling at a wall?
Happily not, after a while a face appears in the wall and it’s that bloke in the black robes off the ‘Mummy’ films. The woman claims to be a new start called Ruth but our man keeps pressing for more details about the operation and her role in the shady experiments he knows that goes on there.
Eventually the chamber opens up and another compartment is revealed to contain a woman with a pretty bad chemical peel. The two fight and Ruth gives her the finger so to speak. We then dissolve to a ‘5 Day’s earlier’ caption and we realise it’s our old favourite, the non-linear narrative.
We meet our woman greeting a new recruit called Ruth - blatant identity theft right there! The man behind the voice (or at least someone who looks like him) is now in the chamber and our woman is the head scientist. It turns out interrogation isn’t their goal but to test new amphetamines that can enhance the abilities of soldiers. We get a bit more back story from an old bloke who looks like Bill Nighy and her off the coffee adverts from the 80’s.
Who will triumph in this battle of wits? Who are ‘the good guys’? and can I have my 90 minutes back please?
This was an OK film but it’s limited scope and in your face politics had me against it from near the start. The main female character played by Shauna Macdonald wasn’t likeable at all, even in the opening section where we were meant to be on her side. Later, when she was revealed to be the evil scientist, albeit one with some heartache, I still wasn’t convinced ,and she was more irritating than scary or despicable.
Coffee woman and the new start didn’t have a lot to do with the later failing to convince in her Road to Damascus type conversion. The guy off the Mummy films was OK but a bit preachy and overly manic when hepped up on goofballs.
The politics were terribly in your face - literally, with one scene having the character telling you how crappy the country is straight to camera, before cutting to another for a reaction shot. Subtle this was not.
To be fair the film did manage to keep my interest, but given we knew after 20 minutes that the roles would be reversed the tension gained was allowed to dissipate. The film did look cheap with most of the action happening in some corridors. It looked like they had broken into an office block for the shoot but couldn’t access the rooms, only the stairs and landings. In places it was almost like a film school project with ropey dialogue delivered in a flat, unbelievable manner by unconvincing actors.
It’s better than being locked in a white box - but only just.
Best Bit : Finger Buffet ‘W’ Rating : 11/23
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