Review of Cube (1998) by Dan M — 13 Oct 2012

A great foreshadowing movie by Lions Gate to lead up to the Saw franchise and yet, despite far less commercial success, a far better series by quality-per-installment.

I've recently finished watching all three Cube movies (in order, they are Cube, Cube 2: HyperCube, and Cube 0) so my memory may not be perfect but what I recall is that Cube introduces us to the concept of several strangers being trapped inside a giant series of cube with some of the cubes being trapped and some being safe, but finding a safe way out begins to play out as a bit of a gigantic rubik's cube. In this Cube, the rooms are marked with three three-digit numbers. The characters eventually figure out their significance as both indications for safe rooms and coordinates on an x, y, z coordinate but dehydration and friction between the characters proves to be a much more imminent threat and this is what separates this movie from so many of Lions Gate's soulless additions to their collection.

The characters use what they did for a living to identify everybody's strength and proving to be a brilliant strategy game in which they would have to use their limited but intentionally provided resources and each others' strengths nearly perfectly to escape alive.

The cast of questionable characters and some well executed dramatic tension gives the movie the feel of a whodoneit when you're trying to decipher who's going to be the good and bad guys and it has a great payoff when it finally becomes clear, quite fortunate too because the world of "The Cube" was becoming a little repetitive at this point when this new character development provides excitement clear up until the end of the movie which I also loved, even more so now that I've seen Cube Zero.