Off Screen (2005)

Let's be realistic.

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I saw this film screened at the 2006 Palm Springs International film Festival and Director Peter Kuipers was on hand to introduce the film and take Q&A after. This is an interesting film with two great acting performances by John Decleir and Jeroen Krabbé. The film begins with and is based on the true story of a 59 year old bus driver who was protesting the introduction by Phillips of widescreen TV's and resisting them as unnecessary technology being forced down the consumers throats. Armed and with a bomb in his briefcase he takes hostages in a building that Phillips had only temporarily been housed in and had moved out of six months before. The film then goes on to tell the fictional tale of the events that led the hostage taker to start a consumer guerrilla war by himself. Since the film is drawn from an actual event and then becomes fictitious you don't really know what is fiction and what is fact and what is real and what is imagined from the viewpoint of the central character and since the actual company name is used throughout the film it really throws you off. The real hostage taker who was identified by the Dutch press as only John R and in this movie as John Voerman, actually sent a communique about the reason for his actions that he was resisting "manipulation by sellers of widescreen television sets who were guilty of creative nonsense." Were he around today to see this film he might indeed find it as creative nonsense. I would rate this a 6.5 to a 7.0 on a scale of 10 and hope to view it someday on a widescreen TV.

I was very skeptic when this movie came out. The movie is based on a true story of a man who takes a building and several employees hostage because he is convinced of it that there are hidden encoded messages in Philips widescreen televisions and he demands that Phillips admits this to the general public, in a TV press conference. Only problem is...he has taken the wrong building hostage. Sounds like more than enough material to make a comedy about, so needless to say that I was very skeptic and even a bit angry when I found out that they wanted to make a serious heavy drama about this man and what drove him to his actions. But the movie ended up being far better than I could have ever had expected it to be.The movie perfectly shows the growing paranoia of the main character and how he slowly looses all sense of reality. The already unstable character (his wife has left him after more than 30 years and he has trouble at his work as a bus driver) becomes more understandable, he's a man who has got nothing more to loose and wants justice.The two main actors are really what drives this movie. Jan Decleir is a truly fantastic actor. This guy has had several big Hollywood offers already (Kubrick wanted him in "Eyes Wide Shut" and he was offered a part in "The World is not Enough" and he has played in several Academy Award winning Dutch movies.). But Jeroen Krabbé really impressed me the most. I already knew what a great actor he was of course but I had never seen him playing a better role as he did in this movie.It's too bad that the story is told in a typical 'Dutch way'. The story keeps jumping from present time to what happened prior to this man's desperate action. It feels kind of pointless that the story is told in this way and it became a bit irritating after a while.Still the movie is not worth the low rating it receives here currently. (Only a 5.3? What's up with that?) and obviously so far all the other movie reviewers here agree with that. The movie is not just good, it's great, thanks to the good directing from big talent Pieter Kuijpers and the acting of the two main actors, Jan Decleir and Jeroen Krabbé. The script could had used some more work here and there though.8/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

I have seen this movie, because I was curious about the way the fact of the hostage was being filmed and about Jan Decleir and Jeroen Krabbé working together. The film tells the story behind the hostage taker John V. He is lonely man living in his own world. He is product of our society. Wesselinck is a self made top manager and can afford everything. He gets to know John by coincidence ( or not ). John is writing letters to Philips because he suspects the multimedia company of putting encoded messages in 'widescreen'tv-sets. John is no longer seeing his wife and children and is a bus driver. In his spare time he writes letters to Philips and watches recorded tapes of a popular knowledge quiz. When he meets Wesselinck the top man, they become friends because they are alike. Wesselinck lets John in on a top secret project which has to do with manipulation. The film takes the audience behind the screens and only reveals at the end. All the time you think it's like this and in the end there is a complete turnaround! Superb! I happened to have an interview with Jan Decleir in Rotterdam last February and he told me the movie had been made in three weeks. The cast worked very hard and the result is a great movie! Go and see for yourself!

I had high expectations of this movie, everybody in The Netherlands was shocked when they heard the news that a man took a building and the people in it hostage. Sometimes the movie is quite confusing you do not always know what is real, at the end it becomes clear. Probably the reason why the rating is so low. But it tells the story about the man who takes people hostage and how he comes to his act and justifies it. I think they did a great job in trying to tell the story behind this man. You even start feeling for this guy. I gave it a 7 out of 10. Go see it, it is worth it. Jeroen Krabbé was good as ever and I also liked Jan Decleir. Both are very good and experienced actors. Definitely no waste of time.