| | Cube [Region 2] |  | Director: Vincenzo Natali
Actors: Nicole De Boer, Maurice Dean Wint, David Hewlett, Andrew Miller, Nicky Guadagni
Category: DVD
Buy Used: $55.29
Used (2) from $55.29
Avg. Customer Rating:  335 reviews
Format: Pal
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Running Time: 90
Discs: 1
EAN: 5024165842232
ASIN: B00004CYQ1
Theatrical Release Date: 1999
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com
If Clive Barker had written an episode of The Twilight Zone, it might have looked something like Cube. A handful of strangers wake up inside a bizarre maze, having been spirited there during the night. They quickly learn that they have to navigate their way through a series of chambers if they have any hope of escape, but the problem is that there are lethal traps awaiting if they choose their route unwisely. Having established some imaginative and grisly punishments in store for the hostages, cowriter and director Vincenzo Natali turns his attention to the characters, for whom being trapped amplifies their best and worst qualities. The film is, in fact, similar to a famous episode of Rod Serling's old television series, though Natali's explanation for why these poor people are being put through hell is a lot closer to the spirit of The X-Files. Cube has some solid moments of suspense and drama, and the sets are appropriately striking: one is tempted to believe at first the characters are lost inside a computer chip. --Tom Keogh
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| Customer Reviews: Read 330 more reviews...
 Compelling idea - poorly executed November 1, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Seven strangers are trapped in a deadly maze and must work together to escape. Each of the seven prisoners has a unique personality, background, and skill set; can they work together to solve the riddle of the cube and escape? I thought this was a very interesting idea for a film and is largely driven by character development among and interaction between the prisoners. In the end though, the characters are so unrealistic and uncompelling that there is little to hold your attention. The maze, or Cube, consists of a series of interconnected rooms. Each room contains six doors, one on each wall, one on the floor, and one on the ceiling. Some of the rooms contain deadly traps that the group must figure out how to avoid. They must also figure out how to exit the maze. The six persons trapped in the maze include a college math student, an autistic man, a policeman, a doctor, a fugitive from prison, and an architect. Initially the story is very compelling: why are they in the maze? who selected these individuals? who built the maze? how do they get out? A tense, claustrophobic atmosphere is created as we learn some initial details about the maze and about the prisoners. As the story develops though, the characters start arguing amongst themselves, ultimately fighting each other. The nature of the arguments is silly, and in the end I couldn't wait for the film to be over. Once they figure out how to escape, the film turns into more of an escape/evasion type of story as some try to leave the other(s) behind. The writers and producer took this film into a pit from which it couldn't recover. Some of the most enthusiastic reviews claim that this film is a microcosm of society or other such nonsense. Balderdash. The most enthusiastic reviews grossly overstate the quality of this film. This is strictly a watch once as a rental type of film, not bad, but could have been much better.
 For people with an attention span October 16, 2008
This is one of the most intelligent films ever made. It is a metaphor for the prison that is the limitations of the human mind/western society.
The key to understanding the film is illustrated in the open scene when we see a lone guy get turned into dog food: they can't survive alone, they have to cooperate with others.
Unfortunately, the people in the Cube though are just like me and you, they are people who have individual skills but have individual flaws and this prevents them seeing the woods for the trees. They are prisoners of the individually and socially constructed limits of imagination, they are prisoners of society and the cube is just a microcosm of this.
I find it astonishing that so few people actually seem to understand this film.
The clues throughout the film are abundant. Each of the characters' names represents a prison:
Leaven + Worth = Fort Leavenworth Prison.
Holloway = Women's Prison.
Kazan = Prison for the mentally handicapped.
Rennes = Prison that innovated many prison norms and regulations used today (Hence Renne's creativity in dealing with traps).
Quentin = San Quentin, a prison known for it's brutality.
Alderson = A prison that focuses on isolation as a form of punishment.
Each of the characters has a skill that will help the group as a whole to escape but conversely each skill is tied to some character defect. Quentin is the leader (cop) who is also a bully when he doesn't get his way, Worth is, effectively, an insider who knows about the making of the Cube - he knows that there is no master plan or conspiracy but that the Cube is just a product of people like him who just do what they are told, accept a pay-cheque and don't want any trouble. Worth is not really that bothered about telling anyone else in the Cube because he is not really concerned as to whether he or anyone else escapes - he is indifferent, 'worthless'.
Holloway cares for the mentally ill but shows no care or tact towards her peers.
Wren is an escape artist but not interested in helping the others escape.
Leaven is a pretty, young and brilliant Maths student but tends towards apathy.
Kazan is a maths genius...perhaps...but has no ability to socialize (he is autistic).
Alderson is a loner whose faith above reason destroys him very early on.
The set of characters in the cube are bound by culturally constructed laws, rules and letters. There are 26(x26x26) rooms which may represent letters in the American-English alphabet. The rooms are all marked by 3-dimensional Cartesian co-ordinates (representing the limits of human spatial imagination). Traps in the rooms conform to a rule with respect to the particular coordinates and the prime numbers applicable to the 3-digit number.
The Cube and the technological traps within thus represents western society as a product of technico-cultural evolution and the individuals inside are trapped by a) the limits of their imagination as represented by the Cube logic, as well as by b) their inability to cooperate.
These two facets are the simultaneous products of historico-cultural evolution of western thought. The Cartesian perspective of "I think, therefore I am" projects a dualist, separatist view of the world - i am different and separate from that around me. This philosophy is, in itself, a product of the legacy of orthodox Christian theology - Christianity is at heart a religion that preaches separation and ego-centrism, e.g. I am special, if I behave i go to heaven, I have an inner-self which is in some sense separate from the material world.
This perspective conflicts with Eastern philosophical doctrines such as Buddhism that emphasize instead the oneness of beings and the (physical and social) world around them. The inability of the individuals to apprehend the Cube's limitations (and thus be able to escape) is a manifestation of their own inability to throw off the shackles of their own personal and inherited socio-cultural history - they are born free but everywhere they are in chains. They are trapped by their own separatist identities, perceived failings, and ego-centrism.
Furthermore, they are victims of being part of a society that rewards such separation. They are stuck in the "Prisoner's Dilemma" (Axelrod, 1984) - the simple premise is that cooperation can provide greater benefit than self-interested behaviour but only if others are willing to cooperate. If other fail to cooperate, it is better to be self-interested rather than a sucker.
This is a frequency-dependent phenomenon meaning that if a majority decide to cooperate, then cooperation will pay and cheaters may even be punished so as to encourage cooperation - tight-knit Eastern societies such as those in Japan and China work along these principles.
So, ultimately the individuals' skills are tied to their failings as this is all part and parcel of the separatist identity they have developed - an aspect of human nature that necessarily develops from infancy to adulthood in conjunction with basic self-consciousness and identity formation but has been prolonged into adulthood by a socio-cultural western tradition routed in Christian and Cartesian separatism and egocentrism.
The prisoners' inability to recognize that they are just elements in a bigger dynamical system which doesn't render them worthless (a perceptual side-effect of egocentric excess) but rather necessary elements of the macro state, the group, accounts for their failure to escape - the irony being that the one escapee is the one that is indifferent to his fate and not bounded by the rules and regulations of the Cube so representative of the western socially constructed world.
Through the overcoming of egocentrism the individuals have the potential to escape their personal prisons that the Cube represents and that is a manifestation of a symbolic, rule-based world in which they have developed - again a Christian legacy that has affected philosophical and scientific perspectives (e.g. information theory, gene-centrism, cognitivism) and governs western thinking to this day.
From this escape they can unravel possibilities that may take them beyond the constraints of current western intellectual imagination and free them from the hell of a world that is bereft of executive instruction (whether from God, aliens, or human dictators) and is instead a socio-culturally evolved accident.
Where such a liberated path might lead noone knows, but any path out of the inferno can't be bad, can it?
"Merde" August 18, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
"What a nightmare" my friend said after we watched "Cube" the first time a few years back. Got that right. If you haven't seen this movie yet and enjoy being horrified and held in extended periods of suspense you are in for a wonderful time.
I just typed out a paragraph describing the plot and setting of the movie, but nevermind. If you haven't seen it yet, it's best if you go in knowing nothing.
Fantastic June 4, 2008
While the characters at first seem stereotyped and boring, the audience quickly sees the pattern of dynamicism. It keeps you interested, and is acted quite well. Though obviously not a high-budget movie, it's far better than many that are. Would recommend to anyone who likes thrillers.
Team work March 23, 2008
This movie is definately one to check out. It shows how certain situations with certain types of characteristics of the human can change an outcome. Not knowing the outcome, this movie keeps you intrigued to the very end.
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