A Washington Post Film Critic

Friday, October 4, 2002; Page WE41

Unfortunately the premise of director Oliver Hirschbiegel's movie (a big critical and public hit in its native Germany) remains too elusive. The idea's more powerful than the movie. Based on "Black Box," a novel by Mario Giordano, the story's about a government-sponsored research experiment in which volunteers are paid to play roles in a model prison. One group gets the guard uniforms, the keys and all the power. The other is thrown behind bars.

At first "guards" and "prisoners" are playful and joshy about this psychological experiment. Everyone assumes this two-week experiment will soon be over and everyone will get their check. But gradually, the 20 participants – ranging from an opportunistic undercover journalist (German heartthrob Moritz Bleibtreu) to an Elvis Presley impersonator – become more emotionally invested in their roles. And a battle of wills emerges (doesn't it always?) between Tarek (Bleibtreu), the natural leader of the cellmates, and Eckert (Timo Dierkes), a quietly sinister control freak with too many keys hanging from his belt.

It's the kind of psychological drama that needs a sure hand in the motivation department; characters need to make believable transitions from their existing states to the personae they adopt in a prison situation. But nobody feels particularly authentic, whether playing roles or not. Which doesn't make the almost inevitable bloodshed work very well. In the end, it looks as if this experiment proves only one thing: People forced to play guards and prisoners tend to end up imitating bad prison movies. In German with subtitles.

DAS EXPERIMENT (Unrated, 113 minutes) – Contains violence, nudity and obscenity. At Visions Cinema/Bistro/Lounge.