Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Absolutely Brilliant!

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

I usually do not comment on a film that I have not seen fully. But here I must. I only saw about 10 minutes of this thing, when Paul Newman checked into the "Hotel" met the guy with the funny man, with the hat with stars on it, and they walked over to a gambling table. That's when I checked out. Current rating for this pile of crap is 5.2. Some giving it a 10.Here's a few of the problems: 1) The edges of the screen were foggy, like in a dream, trying to make it look atmospheric or in a frozen lens – pure crap. 2) "Music" – sound effect – pure crap. 3) Acting – trash. 4) The costumes – what's the deal with the funky hat's? – It looked like they hollowed out some pillows and stuffed it onto actors heads. What's the deal with the guy with the Italian accent. This is supposed to be the future. Maybe someone in the writing team would think that at some point an old fashioned accent like that would have disappeared. So, what I saw was a sample of the movie, 10 minutes. Where I saw the video and heard the audio – what else is there? It was trash. I read through the other reviews. Check it out yourself. All I can say is this thing is a joke. If Paul was alive, I'm sure some dirt-bag at some party would wisecrack about this pile of garbage to him, and get his butt kicked by Paul's bodyguards.

I came across this movie by pure chance while browsing through the Netflix streaming menu. I am sorry I did. This film is most definitely one of the worst pieces of trash I have ever encountered. I counted the minutes till it was over. I am a big movie fan, and an even bigger fan of sci-fi, and I can tell you I have seen many, MANY, movies. But this movie, was just, well GOD awful. Talk about calling a movie in?? Newman was on auto-pilot the whole movie, with this constipated look on his face as he spent a good 50-60% of the his screen time simply walking around one of the most uninspired set designs I have ever seen. The fact that this movie has close to a five star ranking at this point is laughable. Why, because it was directed by and stars someone famous? You take Altman and Newman's names of the marquee and guaranteed the reviews will reflect the true quality of the movie. People on IMDb so clearly get blinded by big names. Meanwhile, IMO, having big talent crank out such a bad product makes a bad film even that much worse (vs your average B-movie with no plot and a bunch of no-names). Believe me, there is nothing to be learned here about human nature as some of the other reviews may have you believe. Except maybe that Hollywood will green light just about anything with big names attached to it. Anyway, I am not even gonna spend a minute more talking or thinking about this thing. Consider yourself warned....

In a post-apocalyptic future, in which the Earth is blanketed by snow, two travellers journey to a distant city. Once there, they discover the last remnants of humanity living a primitive existence within the battered remains of what was once a thriving plaza.After a bomb kills one of the travellers, the survivor, a seal hunter played by Paul Newman, is sucked into playing a local board game called Quintet. As the film progresses, the sinister rules of the game are slowly revealed.Shaped like a pentagon, it becomes apparent that the Quintet game board resembles the layout of the film's ruined city. Similarly, when a player is "killed" on the game board, those who did the "killing" must literally assassinate the opposing player in real life. Presiding over this deadly game is a referee who strongly resembles the film's director, Robert Altman. He exists "out of the game world" and is treated as a God/Satan figure, playing devilish games of life and death with the poor humans. Furthermore, the film links the "five sides" of its city/game to what one character calls the "five stages of life". These stages are "primum" (the pain of birth), "secundum" (the labour of maturing), "tertium" (the guilt of living), "quartum" (the terror of ageing) and "quintum" (the finality of death).Altman thus takes this simple board game and uses it as a metaphor for the hopeless lives of Earth's few remaining survivors. This is an existential tale of humans coping with the imminence of death, our seal hunter hero surviving only because he plays by his own rules.On another level, the film seems to set up numerous Biblical and religious allusions, only to purposeful knock them back down. There are references to the birth of Christ, Joseph and Mary, Satan, Jesus, God, The Passover, St Christopher, white "doves", rituals etc, which Altman playfully introduces then promptly undermines. Altman loves to deconstruct myths, whether he does so here I'm not quite sure.6/10 – An inferior rip off of Bergman and Tarkovsky's "Stalker", much of this film simply consists of people huddled around a game board or walking in the snow. Chop 40 minutes from the film and you'd have a pretty decent flick, but as it is, there's not enough material or depth here to warrant a 2 hour running time. Worth one viewing.

If you're a science fiction fan and you think you're in possession of every sci-fi movie out there that matters - but you haven't seen or don't own Quintet - you have a gaping hole to deal with, for Quintet is essential viewing. It's not perfect, it's maddening at times, but as a wholly unique take on the future (and unspecified future events) it's required viewing, believe it.Quintet is, first off, an American director's (conscious or unconscious, I'm not sure) European-movie excursion - or, it's more akin to, say, a French director's style than an American's. Very long shots of pinpoint-sized characters as they move slow as molasses into full view; utterly spare dialogue; women from a Bergman film; relentless singularity of vision; and nothing given away, no easy answers, fields of question marks all around. A slight movie, in a way...the barest bit of celluloid, with a relative few actors and a rather oblique plot. But the movie sears itself into your brain, and even though you'll never need to see it again after the first viewing (if you're like me), you're not gonna forget it.It should also be mentioned that one of the great feats of Quintet is featuring the very environment itself as an actorly presence, something to be reckoned with - or, more precisely, cold itself as an actorly presence. This movie, next to Fargo, renders the latter a Hawaiian romp, when it comes to the depiction of bone-shivering cold. You cannot watch this movie, even in Arizona, and resist quaking along with the actors. Probably the most believable movie re: pure environmental cold I've ever seen. Which of course matches the goings-on of the story...but you'll have to find that out for yourself. See Quintet, and witness a great director's creative restlessness touching the sci-fi genre in a completely original way. It's like nothing you've ever seen. And it will, in your depths, despite yourself, trouble you.