Robert J. Maxwell 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.

Agnelin "La caja Kovak" follows American science-fiction best-selling author David Norton (Timothy Hutton), who goes on a part business, part pleasure trip to the Spanish island of Mallorca with his girlfriend. He proposes to her and she accepts. On that very night, she jumps off their hotel balcony and kills herself after a short stay at the local hospital. In the bed next to her is Sylvia (Lucía Jiménez), a young woman who found herself jumping off the balcony without having any recollection of how and why she did it. Both women did it right after their phone rang and the song "Gloomy Sunday" began to play on the other end of the line. Together, David and Sylvia decide to try and solve the mystery.The introduction is well done and it lures you into watching more, wanting to know how a song can make apparently normal people want to kill themselves. However, it evolves into a bizarre and not always efficient mix of thriller and science-fiction that completely fails to keep up the suspenseful and supernatural tone of the start, and is in fact rather dull and inconclusive at times. The characters are also quite poorly written -except for David Kelly's character maybe, the most interesting of the whole bunch- and they become quite predictable, as is the ending. Also, many clues thrown in along the way are never properly answered to.All in all, it's an okay movie, one to watch and easily forget.

eminentfreak It's possible to have a great budget, good editing, and an interesting plot, and still come up with an absolute clanger. This movie is it. It manages to be eerie without tension, creepy and repulsive without any fascination, and stylish without any substance whatsoever. The plot is poorly structured, frustrating the viewer with too much information too soon, and tries to reintroduce suspense through the use of music and silly plot twists. The dialogue is poorly written and badly performed by actors chosen mainly for looks and European accents; character motivations seem strange or nonexistent, and lines are delivered deadpan or with too much force. It feels like a bad play performed in a nightmare, by vaudeville actors doing melodrama. It's a Dan Brown novel without the acid, and it suffers. Beware! Idiots at Large! "They" will get you!

gradyharp 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