Starring: Paul Newman
Grade: F
The tagline and poster are better than the entire movie. Don’t let it fool you.
Summary
During a new ice age on Earth, we see Essex (Newman) and Vivia (Brigitte Fossey) walk across a tundra. They stop to see a goose in the sky. Essex is amazed because he hasn’t seen one in years. Eventually, the two settle in some shelter for sleep, and Vivia asks Essex to tell her about his city again so she can fall asleep.
Elsewhere, we see a random group of people playing the board game “Quintet”. The mediator for the game is Grigor (Fernando Rey), and he lets Redstone (Craig Richard Nelson), Francha (Thomas Hill), Deuca (Nina van Pallandt), and Ambrosia (Bibi Andersson) know they’re in the next tournament of Quintet. St. Christopher (Vittorio Gassman), who seems to be friends with Grigor, will also be in the tournament. Essex and Vivia continue their trek on foot and wander into the information center. Here, Essex looks at a map to find someone. Apparently within this map that’s plastered on a glass wall, you can find anyone with a five-digit number and a color code. Afterwards, they continue to walk through the snowy landscape, and they get to Sector 3 to find Essex’s brother Francha. Francha is living with a bunch of people and is shocked to see Essex is still alive. This is where we learn Essex went south to hunt for seals 10-12 years ago. Essex isn’t exactly sure how long ago it was because he’s lost count. He tells Francha that he used to hunt with Vivia’s father until he passed which explains their relationship a lot more now. She’s also pregnant.
Essex, you dog.
They all decide to sit and play Quintet. This is where Essex learns that all they do in this small city is play Quintet. They don’t even work. The tournaments are how they make money, and as we know, Francha is going to be in the next one soon. Essex is the only one not in the mood to play Quintet (as he hasn’t played for years), so he takes it upon himself to get some more wood to burn for the house. At the same time, he plans to explore the town a bit and look for work. Once he goes and has a talk with the wood salesman, Redstone opens the door to Francha’s place and rolls a gigantic bomb into the room, killing everyone. Essex sees the explosion and goes back to the place to see everyone dead. Through the window, he shares a glance with Redstone and chases after him. He gets to some weird building, and Redstone asks why Essex is after him because he technically “broke no rules”. Redstone is then killed by St. Christopher. Essex finds the body and searches his pockets. He finds pieces to Quintet and a paper with a list of names: Redstone, Francha, Deuca, Goldstar, St. Christopher, and Ambrosia. After taking his credentials, he goes back to Francha’s home. The wild dogs are eating everyone but before they can eat Vivia, Essex takes her dead body and dumps it into a nearby river, so she can go away more respectfully I suppose.
Fuck Francha I guess.
Now alone, Essex goes back to the information center to look things up, as well as take another look at Redstone’s stuff. St. Christopher interrupts to ask what he’s doing, with Essex telling him he’s looking for a friend that isn’t alive anymore. He meets with some woman, pretending that he’s Redstone’s friend and that he was supposed to meet him at this woman’s place. She tells Essex that the tournament won’t be over for days and that they play at the casino. She also tells him Redstone has a room at the Hotel Electra in the Red Level of Sector 2. After leaving the place once the woman sets her hand on fire for no reason, he goes to the Hotel Electra. There, he assumes the identity of Redstone, and meets with Deuca to check into the hotel as he tries to uncover the plot of what’s going on. Little does he know, he will find himself in the center of a real-life version of Quintet. Those who are killed in the game have to be killed in real life.
My Thoughts:
This was a complete waste of time. I thought “Hey, this sounds cool. Paul Newman in a sci-fi movie! How come I’ve never heard of this before? This sounds awesome”. After watching the movie, I found out why. Quintet is a dumpster fire masquerading as a film.
This whole movie is about people living on a frozen Earth (no one bothers to explain how or why it happened), and for some reason, everyone loves playing this fucking board game called Quintet. The most annoying part about this is that despite the entire movie being based around this game, they never explain the rules of Quintet or how to play it at all. There’s a bunch of lengthy scenes where we see them playing, but we just sit there and wonder what the hell is going on at all times. All we know is that it revolves around killing people. That’s all I got.
Why the hell does this game consume the lives of everyone in this city? Why is it the only way to make money? How did this happen? Why do these characters feel the need to be included in this game of life or death? Is the “thrill” of it all the same prize for everyone, or did Grigor screw Essex specifically? If not, are all these other citizens cool with this payoff? Why are they? The women involved don’t seem nearly as comfortable with the threat of death, but they play anyway. Why? Also, Grigor and St. Christopher know from the beginning that Essex isn’t Redstone, so why the hell do they play along with it and not expect it to bite them in the ass? They always play by the rules, why change it up this one time? What are the motivations for the bad guys in this situation? Well, I don’t know. The story refuses to answer even the most basic of questions the audience has, choosing instead to leave us in the dark for the duration of the movie.
The details of the screenplay continued to give us questions. The most important seemed to be what was up with Vivia’s relationship with Essex. Did she become his wife? I’m assuming he’s the one that impregnated her because nothing else is known about Vivia, but this is somewhat problematic. I understand this world they live in has regressed into something primitive (I mean we have a ridiculous number of scenes where packs of wild dogs eat dead bodies), but they imply Vivia is very young. The actress is clearly an adult, but the character is wildly unaware of what’s going on. We even see her sucking her thumb when she goes to sleep. How young is she? It’s very weird, but context clues lead me to believe she’s with the greying Paul Newman, so I don’t know. Again, not enough is known. Most of the movie’s runtime is used for Paul Newman to walk around the landscape in search of things we don’t know about. I’m not joking. In some scenes, he’ll be walking for miles at a time, and the camera follows him throughout just to make the movie even longer when it doesn’t need to be. Even during the ending, the camera watches him walk for over a minute before we know the movie is going to end. It’s infuriating to watch.
The biggest moment of the first act happens when Redstone rolls a bomb into Francha’s shelter and kills everyone. Now, how in the absolute fuck did this happen? This bomb is as big as a fucking missile! How is it that not a single person noticed the door being opened or the giant missile rolling towards them?! How? The game isn’t that involved. They regularly talk to each other during a Quintet session, so it’s not like they were that distracted. The door isn’t ten feet from where the group was playing their game either. How is it that NOT ONE PERSON LOOKED UP?! How?! This isn’t possible! Then, you have the weird decision from Essex to set up the rest of the movie. He sees Redstone is dead, so why is his first instinct to grab his stuff and assume his identity? It doesn’t make sense for Essex to include himself in this wild conspiracy. The person that killed Vivia and Francha has been murdered. In a way, Essex got his revenge. His story can end right then and there. Why would this pique his interest so badly? He needs more of a reason other than curiosity. Shouldn’t he be worried about food or something?
A “B” story was needed to give us more story to latch onto and though Vivia’s characterization was very weird, I think she was the key that was missing. When she reveals she’s pregnant and the other women in Francha’s household are amazed by this because procreation isn’t much of a thing now that they’re in an ice age, they should’ve ran with this. Having Essex being forced to protect Vivia and the unborn baby from the dangers of Quintet could’ve added a lot of depth to the story and gave us more of a reason to care for this game.
If they cut all the scenes dedicated to Essex walking, they could’ve easily made this happen. The movie would’ve been just as long as it is now but at least in this scenario, the movie might have been worth a shit.
Quintet seems to be focused on this huge buildup for a majority of the film, but the payoff at the end is “Well, this is our big reveal, but it’s not surprising nor maddening”. They try to do this weird metaphor thing of hope and a bunch of other pretentious nonsense, but I couldn’t give less of a fuck at that point. The only thing you realize is that you legitimately wasted two hours of your life. It’s so damn confusing and nothing is really explained as much as it needs to be. You just get idiotic scenes like when Essex talks to this one lady about Redstone in her home. He goes to her for answers (and at this point, we hope and pray she has some), but it goes nowhere. As she talks, she sets her hand on fire for no reason whatsoever. Even Essex tries to tell her, but she waives him off by saying something like “I haven’t had a fire in…” and then, she doesn’t even finish her sentence and changes the subject. You also never see her character for the rest of the movie. What in God’s name was that about? What did this accomplish other than letting Essex know where Redstone stays at? Another character with some actual use couldn’t have told him?
Along with the dogshit story, there’s this stylistic choice of having the edges of the screen contain this fuzzy glare over it. I can’t tell if it makes the entire story look like it’s a dream or that it’s told entirely from the point of view of binoculars. It’s incredibly distracting and a horrible aesthetic choice.
Paul Newman wanders through Quintet looking just as confused as we are, and that should basically tell you all you need to know. The only good parts about this movie are the cool character names and Newman’s costume (which he pulls off well). That’s about it.
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