The Box By Wally Fong on Feb 6, 2004

A great effort but The Box is still square..

A story of great coincidences that revolve around a struggling family and a brief case of missing genetically made deadly biotoxin.  The Box delivers an ambitious mostly character driven story of Dan (Pete Bauer) a man who has just lost his job at a magazine selling firm and bets his last $100 at the track in the hope of hitting it rich so he doesn’t keep disappointing his new wife Louise (Samantha Grahn) and her daughter Jenny (Dorothea Bauer).  The flipside of this story begins right at the top of the film where eb100349 or Lucifer the genetically altered strain of the Ebola virus was made.  Within the first 15 minutes of the film the virus is described, what’s half life is, it’s dangerous tendencies are, how to keep it stored, and then is promptly stolen with all the scientist involved killed.  Just like the synopsis of the film states: Fate plays a hand as a child accidentally brings home a box of genetically engineered contagion into her stormy home life.

The film is shot beautifully with great exposition and framing.  While I am a fan using dissolves while editing, there was far too much dissolving between shots and scenes.  You need to have a point to use a dissolve i.e.: display the acceleration of time passing on screen or to hold the significance of the last shot for either and emotional or visual effect.  I rather enjoyed the exploding lab rat scene just to drive to the point how dangerous eb100349 is.  Dr. Gee (John Snell) while playing a purely a plot point driven character was amusing to watch as he laid on his high brow scientist routine with dry jokes.

Right away I had a problem with the action throughout the whole movie.  Whether it was a struggling scene, chase scene, cat and mouse, or an out right murder it all fell very flat in it’s presentation and didn’t have an explosive feel or sense of urgency or tension that most action scene depict.

Just how long can you sit at a stop sign?  Why in hell would you leave your post at work?  How can you not notice a box “that has some weight to it” clinging to your camera bag until it most unlikely ends up at the bottom of the steps you’re walking down?  While there are minor logic problems in the story they are more or less forgiven by the shear nativity of all the characters in the film even the main bad guy and his assassin.

The score throughout the film was better than outstanding in my observation.  Although I wished it had kicked in a little more often, when it was there it really flushed out a scene.  The sound work on the other hand was too clean and sterile for film that for a good part off was shot outside.  More ambient and organic fill tracks would have benefited the overall sound design.

The script was compelling enough for me watch from beginning to end; I wanted to know what happens to Lucifer.  Frequently jokes fall flat in the story and the writing was somewhat predictable.  While The Box follows the theme of fate and it’s power just like his previous film “Justice” I find it very hard to swallow that people, objects, and events are always so neatly intertwined.  Scenes such as the one with Louise and Jenny talking about living and life in reference to boxes and Dans' list of 10 things to achieve in life stood out for me as unique within the story other scenes made me groan and out right and laugh.  One example of this is when “Uncle Steve” Jenny’s uncle also happens to be surprise the main bad guy in the film Mr. Anderson.  With a name like Mr. Anderson and the Morpheus like Matrix speech he gives about nothing being coincidences and fate made me laugh out loud, the irony whether it was intentional or not was not lost on me.  Issues like this is what ruined the end of the film for me.  While Dan’s sudden 007 antics towards the end of the film did produce a couple of tense moments, the way events played out were too textbook neat and dispelled the feeling that Dan was in genuine danger.

Textbook or not the sentimental happy ending of the film made me smile, smirk, and groan at the same time.  In the black in the white world that Pete Bauer has created for this film, the moral of the story rings loud and clear.

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Wally Fong