Directed by Gabe Torres
Written by Timothy Mannion
USA, 2012
If nothing else, Gabe Torres’ thriller Brake is an excellent advertisement for movie houses. Seeing it in one’s living room, even with the lights off, just won’t capture the same sort of claustrophobic feeling as seeing it in a theater. That is not to say that Brake is a good movie, but its tightly enclosed, one-location atmosphere covers its flaws for a good long while.
A man played by Stephen Dorff awakens in a coffin-sized box with a timer counting down above him. Viewers who want to go in unspoiled may want to avoid the film’s IMDb page, which reveals considerably more about who this man is and what he’s doing there. The film itself opts to unspool this information slowly, as the camera never leaves Dorff for a minute.
If that sounds like a more high-tech twist on the recent Ryan Reynolds-starring indie Buried, it’s because that’s exactly what it is. This is not a bad thing by itself, as Buried was an innovative enough concept that it can sustain a rip-off or two. However, it doesn’t leave any room for mistakes; if Brake slips up too much, one might prefer to see the film it rips off instead, and that’s exactly the problem here.
Without spoiling too much, the problem is that Brake becomes more and more ridiculous as the kidnappers’ central plot is revealed in more and more detail. At a certain point the plot requires the kidnappers to be so omniscient that the movie stops being about Dorff trying to outwit his captors and more closely resembles torture porn. (Apparently, in addition to being master planners and electricians, these bad guys are also senseis in beekeeping.)
Dorff is game for a role that is both physically and emotionally demanding; in fact this performance compares favorably with more prestigious films like Somewhere. However the weight of his performance ultimately collapses the movie, as the final absurd twists destroy any credibility that his acting had lent to the film. In the end Brake leaves hardly any impression at all, which is far worse than a performance as difficult as this one deserves.
-Mark Young