The Kovak Box (2006)

Very Cool!!!

A Disappointing Continuation

it is the rare 'crazy' movie that actually has something to say.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

This is one of those quirky little offbeat movies that go completely unrecognised by the viewing public, only to turn up unannounced on late-night TV one night years later. I saw it was on, realised I knew absolutely nothing about it, and sat down to watch it...and was pleasantly surprised by an affectionately made film that feels like a TWILIGHT ZONE episode writ large.The plot is like something out of a 1950s-era pulp novel (or maybe Stephen King's CELL) and the story unfolds at speed. Layers of mystery, paranoia and suspense are built up enshrouded in a kind of finesse that only Spanish filmmakers seem to know how to achieve these days.The international funding allows for a decent Hollywood actor (THE DARK HALF's Timothy Hutton) and a host of other genuinely good performers, including Lucia Jimenez's sympathetic heroine and David Kelly's quirky villain. Really, it's the originality that stands out here, with a series of bizarre situations, all handled ably and depicting events you're not likely to see anywhere else. I love this stuff!

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.

It's a complicated plot. David Kelly, as Frank Kovak, is an ancient and brilliant scientist who has invented a kind of chip that can be implanted in an unsuspecting victim's neck. He's had this done more than a hundred times and all these unknowing subjects are walking around on Mallorca, the tourist mecca in Spain's Balearic Islands. The chips can be activated when the subject hears Billy Holiday singing "Gloomy Sunday." When they are activated, the subject commits suicide. Any attempt to tinker with the chips sets them off. De rigeur in these kinds of stories.This happens to the bride of David Norton (Timothy Hutton). She jumps from a hotel balcony and splashes. In fact, there is a rash of similarly motivated suicides on Mallorca and the despondent Hutton runs into another jumper (Lucia Jimenez) who survives only because her fall was broken by an awning.The two join forces and Hutton, a successful science fiction writer, finally tracks down the malefactor, Kelly, who nevertheless succeeds in prompting about a hundred people to leap to their deaths in The Caves of Hell on the island. Kelly is dying of a brain tumor and tries to blackmail Hutton into shooting him. He succeeds after threatening to reactivate Jimenez's chip so that she'll off herself successfully.It's a perplexing movie. A good deal of imagination has obviously gone into the plot, which hangs together nicely. Except, I suppose, once the conundrum is clarified, all the potential victims need to do is to make sure they're never in a position to listen to Billy Sunday again. (Jimenez, when hearing the tuneful trigger, manages to stay under water long enough to escape the consequences.) It's slow and there's little in the way of action but I rather liked it. Frank Kovac is the evildoer, of course, but he's so wizened and he sounds so sweet that it's difficult to categorize him as thoroughly evil. He is, after all, a sick and dying human being who is facing what remains of his bleak future with dignity and without complaint. It's so much better than casting some tattooed moron as the heavy.Timothy Hutton gives a subdued performance, projecting the presence of a man whose would-be wife has recently done a nose dive off a hotel balcony. Lucia Jimenez is there primarily to provide a threatened female. (She and Hutton both know she's sporting one of those chips in her neck.) She does a professional job, though, and she has sensual features and a nice figure, so we'll let her stay in the picture and be threatened. She does NOT wind up in bed with Hutton, or together with him on the departing airplane either, which is a blessing because the alternative is a terrible cliché.The spare musical score by Roque Banos is mysterioso -- somber and spooky. The director may need a little seasoning. The movie has no touches that anyone would consider out of the ordinary. Not that every film MUST be full of directorial razzle-dazzle. But let me give one example of what I mean.Hutton and Jimenez have discovered the secret to the rash of suicides and have come into possession of records that support their conclusion. They take them to the American embassy. The men on the other side of the desk do what these movies always require of them -- they don't believe a word of it. So how does the director handle this formulaic situation? Not like Hitchcock did in "The Man Who Knew Too Much", and not like Roman Polanski in "Frantic." Instead, after the evidence is presented, the Consul shakes his head and smirks while denying that it constitutes proof or, indeed, anything suggestive enough to be worth pursuing. It's as if Hutton and Jimenez were two nuts. The stereotypic template is followed down to the last millimeter.But you can easily get over these occasional directorial vacations -- the cross-cutting between the people about to leap to their doom and the car speeding to their rescue. The plot's the thing. And it's not bad.

THE KOVAK BOX is a successful little suspense/psychological thriller from the Spanish writers Daniel Monzón (who also directs) and Jorge Guerricaechevarría. The story may be a bit far fetched, but then what horror story isn't? The premise for the tale holds up well and is aided by some very fine performances by a mixture of Spanish, English, and American actors. The mood of the film is beautifully set during opening credits by a complex maze in which a white rat sniffs and ambulates from confusing corner to confusing wall - just the manner in which director Monzón plans to tell his story.David Norton (Timothy Hutton) is a celebrated science fiction novelist visiting Majorca for a special conference accompanied by his soon to be fiancée Jane (Georgia Mackenzie). David has been having premonitions on his flight to the conference and those brooding thoughts continue as he registers for the conference and finds little disturbing clues that culminate in Jane's suicide leap from their hotel balcony. Almost simultaneously an attractive Spanish girl Silvia (Lucía Jiménez) in the same hotel 'jumps' from her balcony but is saved from death by falling onto an awning. Jane dies in the hospital: Silvia is in the bed next to Jane, witnesses David's grief, and the beginning of a bond is created.David meets a strange old man Frank Kovak (David Kelly) who seeks an autograph of David's first novel 'Gloomy Sunday' and from there the mystery begins. David becomes the unknowing main character in a sci-fi story that mimics ideas from his own first book, a story about the implantation of devices in humans that would enable a central force to assist the victims in their own destructive ends. The plot is tightly woven from this point on and to reveal any portion of it would diminish the chair-gripping finale.Timothy Hutton seems an odd choice for the main character of the film until his combination of cool intellect and understated passion clicks in. The film is graced by the presence of the talented Lucía Jiménez who seems to have the potential of becoming another Penelope Cruz! The cinematography by Carles Gusi and musical score by Roque Baños make the setting visually and aurally spectacular. For those who enjoy mind bender thrillers, THE KOVAK BOX will certainly please. Grady Harp