It's like the Matrix, but not really.

Rating: 8/10 (10 September 2010)

Cube is a smart little sci-fi thriller out of Canada that is sort of like a low-budget, stylistic half-cousin of The Matrix. That doesn't mean Cube features a lot of kung fu and slow motion special effects. It means that, like The Matrix, this movie tells a gripping and engrossing story which has a lot of philosophical and even theological themes running through it.
Cube is about 6 people who wake up in the middle of a death-machine. It's a giant cube made up of individual square rooms. Some of the rooms are safe and some will kill you in horrible ways. These 6 people, who don't know how or why they were put into the cube, have to work together to find their way outif such a way even exists. It's a fairly basic plot but it's extremely well executed, leaving you never quite sure exactly what's coming.
The meat of the story comes from the interactions of the 6 main characters and the larger social/cultural attitudes they represent. Rennes (Wayne Robson) is a hardened criminal and expert at escaping from prison who only cares about saving his own hide. Quentin (Maurice Dean Witt) is a cop whose aggression and determination both protects and imperils everyone around him. Leaven (Nicole de Boer) is a brilliant math student who mostly does what others tell her. Hollway (Nicky Guadagni) is a doctor and a leftist conspiracy theorist, always ready to blame the "powers that be" for screwing up everything. Worth (David Hewlett) is an apathetic office worker, the sort of guy who stands apart and watches life pass him by and inside the cube, he'll just stand and watch death run right at him. Kazan (Andrew Miller) is a mentally handicapped man who tests the limits and value of the others' compassion. These 6 characters in this fantastic circumstance are forced to confront the truth about themselves and question everything they believed about their lives and their reality.
In addition to the conflicts between the characters and the challenges they have to overcome, Cube also raises broader issues of personal action and the purpose of life. Is this death-machine the deliberate creation of some evil minds or is it simply an idea that ran out of control because no one was willing to take the responsibility of stopping it? Does the cube represent a social order imposed on us by others or it is the product of our own actions and inactions? Is there any aim to how the cube operates or is it all meaningless? Does the way you survive inside the cube say something about the way you should live your everyday life? Is the maker of the cube a "benevolent god" trying to teach a lesson or a malevolent being who just wants others to suffer?
There is uniformly fine acting by the cast, who all manage to give genuine human depth to archetypal roles. The dialog is direct without seeming contrived. The look and sound of the cube itself is tremendously impressive. Many films have spent a lot more money and not come up with anything as visually powerful and suggestive.
This is a really entertaining, scary and thought-provoking movie. It's also similar to The Matrix in that Cube spawned two sequels, both of which seemingly didn't understand what made the first film so special and ended up sucking because of that. But no amount of lame ass sequels can take away from the fact that Cube is damn good.