the audience applauded

Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

The Gauntlet. A handful of strangers, all of whom have previously killed, find themselves trapped in a deadly and mysterious building. It soon becomes a fight for survival with challenging Biblical riddles to solve along the way. The Running Man and Saw are two movies that sprung to mind, with added Satanic references. There's plenty of violence and action to help pass it's relatively short running time, bit of suspense too. The ending is a bit hard to swallow though. Ba Ling, who was 47 at the time, looks fantastic. A reasonable if instantly forgettable time filler.

In a sunken castle, 5 people awaken with little to no memory of how they got there. They quickly learn that they are being tested and find that they must band together to try to figure out how to escape. But who is responsible for their imprisonment and why have these 5 specific people being chosen?The Gauntlet or Game Of Assassins as it is otherwise known is very similar in feel to Cube (another film where a group of strangers are locked in together and must work together and solve puzzles to escape). Predictably this results in a film that isn't particularly fresh or original...Having said that, in this film it really doesn't matter too much as the camera is always busy and the film rarely sits still - there is just about enough exposition and character development to get an understanding of what is going on, but it's never overdone here and although this film is flawed it is never dull.One complaint I did have with this film was the dark and dingy look of the film; sure it's necessary to an extent due to where they are located, but at times it was impossible to see what was going on which in some ways removed some of the tension from proceedings. The editing and choreography of some of the fight sequences was also poor and amateurish which resulted in a lot of these fight sequences being a bit laughable.The cast are all OK, but no-one really makes much of an impression truth be told and they do all feel like clichés of characters that I've seen before.I don't want to be too harsh on this film as it is, to be fair, moderately entertaining and at only 80 minutes long it gets the job done without any needless filler, crass subplots or soppy romances. However, it's never as good as the films that it has borrowed from which is problematic and ultimately renders it as a second-rate variation.

I just finished watching this, and I was pleasantly surprised. It's about 5 people who get trapped in some sort of ancient-like dungeon. There are a couple different rooms they have to get into in order to escape the gauntlet - which was the original title of the movie - and each room has a puzzle they have to solve before they can advance. Generally, a blood sacrifice of sorts has to be made.Bai Ling (Red Corner, The Crow) and Warren Kole (24, The Following) lead the cast. This is probably the first movie since Red Corner that Bai Ling has been in in which she did not play some tramp, slut, or bimbo. She was actually allowed to act, and she did a good job. Plus she looks really good. She's close to 50, but looks half that age. I always thought she'd be a Chinese superstar like Li Bingbing and Xiang Ziyi, but for some unfortunate reason that didn't happen.There are deaths in this movie, which I knew there would be, but I was still surprised at some of those who were killed. I can't say this was all that original, but it was pretty well done for what it was. The poster for this film doesn't make much sense when compared to the actual movie.I recommend this movie. I gave it a 6-star rating. I might revisit that later, but I tend to rate a movie based on how I feel right after viewing it. Perhaps this deserves more like a 5-star rating, but even though the material has been done before, as I said earlier, they did a good job on it.

Saw this in the festival circuit last year when it was titled 'The Gauntlet.' It's a little bit of Saw and a little bit of DaVinci Code.Five strangers wake up in what seems to be a labyrinthine or underground castle with no memory of how they got there. Their relationships to one another are unknown, and the loyalties they form for survival are tenuous at best. Each level of this dungeon proves a grueling challenge where the price to move forward is often another person's life. Along the way, a sense of each person's past and a glimmer of their true character peeks through. In fact this is the more enjoyable aspect of the feature. I respected the internal life of these characters and learning who they were. Meanwhile, blood, much blood, much death. Bai Ling (The Beautiful Country, The Crow) is fantastic as a disturbed and merciless survivalist. Though the least of the actors that needs to prove themselves on an ostensibly low-budget genre flick, Bai Ling goes for broke, covered in blood for basically the entire film. Another treat was the casting of Dustin Nguyen (The Rebel) whose performance is one of subtlety and dignity. The Gauntlet is what it is. It goes for broke and I had fun while it did.