SnoopyStyle Paulina Escobar (Sigourney Weaver) and her lawyer husband Gerardo (Stuart Wilson) live in a remote home in a South American country still dealing with its recent dictatorship. Paulina is on edge haunted by the torture she suffered. One stormy night, Gerardo gets a ride home with neighbor Dr. Roberto Miranda (Ben Kingsley). Paulina recognizes his voice as that of her unseen tormentor and she takes him prisoner. Gerardo tries desperately to talk her out of the situation and agrees to be the man's defense lawyer as she tries him in her trial.It's a three-person play and everybody delivers. Weaver is amazing and Wilson is great. There are simply no words to describe Kingsley. Director Roman Polanski keeps the static location compelling and really relies on the actors to develop the climbing tension.

gavin6942 A political activist (Sigourney Weaver) is convinced that her guest (Ben Kingsley) is a man who once tortured her for the government.Sigourney Weaver topless, not something I ever needed to see. She plays a nut case and I hate her even more than usual in this film. The worst torture I can imagine is having Weaver's used panties stuffed in my mouth. Also, her acting is really, really, really bad. Her casting took this film from a potential success to a steaming pile of horse apples.This was directed by Roman Polanski, whose experience with the Holocaust makes the topic of human rights a personal matter.In the background is a human rights commission to examine torture and murder between 1975-1980 with Weaver's husband as the head and her as a skeptic, thinking the whole thing is a "whitewash". She works, inadvertently, to sabotage it."You can never entirely possess the female soul." This quote appears, attributed to Nietzsche. What is its significance?

Robert J. Maxwell Considering that this is a play and rather looks like one, it's pretty good. Well, it's good anyway.A lawyer, Gerardo (Stuart Wilson) and his wife Paulina (Sigourney Weaver) have just retired in their comfortable, isolated house next to a cliff overhanging the sea. The location is somewhere in South America, in a country that has just emerged from despotism and become a democracy. A car has trouble on the road in front of their house. Dr. Miranda (Ben Kingsley) rouses them and asks for help, but an electrical storm has knocked out both the power and the phone.Gerardo and Dr. Miranda are chatting in the living room while Paulina is still in bed. Hearing Miranda's voice, she sits up in alarm, sneaks outside, burns off in Miranda's car and pushes it over a cliff.That, I guess, is the end of Act I. Most of the time we spend with Gerardo and Miranda in the living room. The two men are at loose ends and drink themselves into a cheerfully befuddled state. I can't remember many drunk scenes better than this one. Kingsley, in particular, is given marvelous lines and delivers them as if they were gifts to the audience -- cynical, ironic, high brow, amiable. "I would like to quote Nietzsche in a situation like this," says Kingsley. "At least I think it was Nietzsche. Maybe it was Freud." Gerardo, "If you can remember a quotation, it's usually Freud." The dialog is delicious and matter of fact. The two men are sitting on the porch steps, still thinking Paulina is asleep, musing about where a thief might have driven Miranda's car, and why. "I'm an idiot," says Kingsley. "I'm running down the road yelling 'That's my car!' Of course the thief knows that. That's the whole POINT." Later, when they find out that Paulina has stolen the car, "I mean, what is this -- a regular thing or what? How long do you think we might have to wait? A day or two? A month?" Then the humor dwindles to a palpitating point and vanishes, and the movie becomes echt-serious. Paulina claims that Miranda worked as an interrogator for the now-deposed dictatorship and that he beat, tortured, and raped the women who were his prisoners -- Paulina included. (She's explicit about the techniques.) Gerardo thinks she's crazy. Miranda is astonished and scared to death.Paulina has Miranda tied up and puts him on trial, appointing Gerardo his defense counsel. Some "trial"! If Miranda confesses and shows genuine contrition she'll let him go, otherwise she'll shoot him through the head. Miranda, sensibly, is perfectly willing to confess and get out of this mad house but, since he claims to have had nothing to do with the previous regime, he doesn't know what to confess to. Paulina wants details -- what was she tied up with, ropes or wires? -- that Miranda says he is unable to provide.It's a harrowing movie, with occasional arcs of electricity jumping through it. I'm not certain the ending is played exactly as it would be in real life, but it hardly matters because the acting on the part of all three principals is unimpeachable.I don't want to give away the climax but I'll sum up my impression by saying that it's quite possible to be guilty OR innocent, while still being mad.See it if you can. It's a hard film to forget.

lastliberal Roman Polanski's film is raw and exciting as you are literally on the edge of you seat wondering just what is going to happen next.It is based upon a play, so there are only three characters, but that is all it needs.Sigourney Weaver is a torture survivor from a Latin-American country. Pick one, we have been complicit in torture in many of them. She is married to Stuart Wilson, who has just been picked to head up a new commission to bring torturers to justice, but only those who have killed. There will be nothing for survivors like Weaver.Enter the great Ben Kingsley, who just happens to pick up her husband after a flat tire. She recognizes the voice - or she says she does. The rest of the story is how she is convinced he is her torturer and captures him to force a confession.This is where it gets raw and powerful as she recounts what was done to her while trying to get a confession. Her husband is caught in that trap where you support your wife, but you don't quite believe her to be right.It was compelling, and all three actors made it a film that should have gotten wider recognition.