Good story, Not enough for a whole film

What a freaking movie. So many twists and turns. Absolutely intense from start to finish.

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

The movie begins. A mouse is trapped. It is trapped in a maze. A maze controlled by someone, to guide the mouse. The maze seem endless. Such is the beginning of the Kovak Box, but it is also the entire movie played out in a single opening sequence.Is there a need then, to continue watching the movie? Yes, of course. The movie is anything but predictable. Even though you know you are entering a maze, you have no idea what it looks like, or what turns you must take a long the way, and make no mistake, you, the watcher, are as much trapped within this movie as David Norton, the writer.I would like to tell a bit about the plot, but beware of the words, they must be vague.The writer, David Norton (Timothy Hutton), is going to Mallorca, with his girlfriend Jane. He is attending a conference in his honor. He is a science fiction writer, but is currently looking for that next masterpiece that will make the world remember him forever. On the plane there, he deletes an idea that might have been something from a David Cronenberg film. And yes, I would have watched that movie as well, gladly. But this story is not the one that David is looking for. There is another couple on the plane, but the movie makes no attempt to hide the fact that we should only be interested in the woman. At this point, there is no connection between the two, but that is about to change.On the island strange things start to happen. A Russian hit-man. The arrival of a mysterious DVD with a monkey that kills itself. Strange phone calls and music. Suicides. It is all connected, of course, but only revealed by the end.This started with the feeling of a Cronenberg film (I wonder if its a coincidence that the main character was named David?), but turned into a Fincher film (another David...), and for a second reminded me a bit about The Game. When that is said, while Timothy Hutton does a nice job at playing the role of the writer, the characters surrounding him are not the likes of which Cronenberg, Fincher or even Lynch (a third David...) would have used.I like the overall premise of the film, but by the end, too much is explained. The three Davids would never have explained this much, they would have challenged the watcher to find the answers for himself. This is the biggest problem of the movie. Was it worth watching? Yes, of course. Could it have been better? Yes, surely, but I would have no trouble going back and seeing it a second time.

Have you ever watched a lobotomized movie? You know, one that started out really smart and then suddenly became really dumb for no apparent reason? The Kovak Box is that sort of film.It begins by focusing on two different people. David Norton (Timothy Hutton) is a famous science fiction author taking his girlfriend to Spain for a speaking appearance. On the plane with them is Sylvia (Lucia Jimenez), a young Spanish woman returning home from the United States. Initially, their lives don't appear to have anything to do with one another. While David is asking his girlfriend to marry him, Sylvia goes out dancing and hooks up with the club DJ. But then David's girlfriend commits suicide for no reason…and Sylvia tries to do the same by jumping out of her apartment window after hearing a song on her cell phone. Sylvia wakes up in the hospital with no memory of what happened and can't imagine why she would have tried to kill herself. David also can't imagine why his girlfriend took her own life, but the reason for both incidents is the same and leads David and Sylvia into strangely sedated conflict with Frank Kovak and his horrific experiments in mind control.This movie starts out very strong and by the time Sylvia's naked body plunges from her apartment window, I had no idea what was going on and was really interested in finding out. Unfortunately, within 15 minutes I had completely figured out what was going on and spent the next hour and a half watching the film degenerate into a confused, poorly written, generic thriller.The confusion comes when the film changes its mind as to what it's supposed to be about. The story introduces us to something called a Kovak Box. It's a device where lab rats go through a maze and have their behavior modified through positive and negative stimulus. It's obvious that the genesis of this movie was the idea of taking a person's life and transforming it into a real Kovak Box where the person would be manipulated into behaving a certain way and the goal would be to overcome that manipulation. So, that's how the story is set up but that's not how it unfolds. That's because at some point the filmmakers became more interested in the story as a metaphor for the creative impulse and the writing process where Frank Kovak wants David to write Kovak's life story. Imagine a sports movie that starts out being about a football team needing to win the big game, but then changes to be about the lead quarterback's efforts to learn to play the violin.The Kovak Box has the same glaring flaw of just about every poorly written film as well. There are multiple times through the story where characters have to stop and say out loud what the movie is about and dump a bunch of information on the audience so the story can move forward. The whole point of a moving picture is to show and not tell, but The Kovak Box repeatedly has both David and Kovak bluntly run down the story so far and where it needs to go now, without which the movie couldn't inch from scene to scene. There are also times when the writer of the movie clearly doesn't understand what he's writing about, such as when he confuses the difference between having a vivid imagination and having perfect recall.There's also clichés a plenty, from "the race against time" to "no one believes the main characters when they explain the threat" to "the villain explains his plans", which actually happens three different times. And after starting out with Sylvia being an equal character to David, she quickly becomes nothing more than a damsel in distress waiting to be rescued.The Kovak Box is one of those movies where if you're not paying attention, you might be fooled into thinking it's much better than what it is, another interesting idea pressed into the same cookie cutter format used so many times before.

I'm not sure I've seen the 'Gloomy Sunday' reference explained here. 'Gloomy Sunday' was written by Hungarian composer Rezső Seress in 1933. The song is legendary for (allegedly) causing people to commit suicide after hearing it. Check out Wikipedia (search 'Gloomy Sunday') for the very interesting background on the song.As for the movie, I really thought it was first-rate. I found it at the video store, and got it thinking it might at least entertain me. It did more than that - the plot had me hooked from the first five minutes on.A "Kovak Box" is explained in the movie, but that itself is a reference to the "Skinner Box" of B.F. Skinner. This article, which comes from Snopes.com provides some very interesting background tidbits to the movie - you will recognize where certain plot elements come from - http://www.snopes.com/science/skinner.asp.If you like movies with a lot of intrigue, this is a great one to rent.

David Norton(Timothy Hutton)is a best-selling author that of course controls the heroes, villains and subject matter of his 25 novels. Without explanation the real world starts imitating his fictional world...to be exact just like his very first book. While speaking at a conference on a Mediterranean island, he is approached by a strange fan Frank Kovak(David Kelly); and his fiancée receives a mysterious phone call and jumps to her death from their hotel balcony. Soon others around him begin committing suicide. Is this a scientific experiment carried out by the government...similar to circumstances in his first novel? And how does Kovak figure in all this? Suspense with disturbing content. Also in the cast: Lucia Jimenez, Georgia Mackenzie, Gary Piquer and Annette Badland.