Film Review: The Circle (2005) from Director Yuri Zeltser

When was the last time you finished watching a film and the first thing you thought was "How did they do that?" The Circle is exactly that kind of film.

The story is nothing particularly new. Stan (Scott Cohen), a professional hit man, is hired to kill the husband of Jay (Angela Bettis). Jay finds Stan and begins a long journey to call off the hit against her husband.

What is new is director Yuri Zeltser's execution in The Circle. While the vast majority of films are shot scene by scene, over and over until the director is convinced there is enough material to edit into a good film, The Circle was shot in one take. The film, almost two hours long, was lit, recorded, and performed in one long continuous shot. One camera, a handful of actors, and an inventive set allowed for flashbacks, scene changes, and even driving sequences to be executed flawlessly. No detail is overlooked in the quest to create a single-shot feature length film.

The actors would have to be very talented to even come close to pulling this off, and they more than rise to the occasion. Angela Bettis plays a perfectly vulnerable, desperate wife with a history of pain and suffering. Scott Cohen is more than convincing in his significant role as the hit man just doing his job. Even supporting players with one scene, like Jill Jacobson as Mom - the lady of a strip club and brothel - and Kamala Lopez-Dawson as Hilga - the girl who gives the best lap dances, light up the screen with an intensity and commitment rarely seen in cinema. The performers pulled double-duty on this film. Not only did they have to be great screen actors, they had to be screen actors in the context of an almost theatrical-production pulled off in real time. One mistake and the whole film would have to be reshot to achieve the effect.

There is a distinct downside to the film. The story veers from a tense thriller in the first act into a barely plot-led experimental journey into the mind and heart for the remainder of the film. The director even tries to play off of philosophical theories of the afterlife in subtle ways within in the context of a modern day adult version of Alice in Wonderland. This sudden shift in the style and tone of the film reduces what could have been an excellent, innovative production into a overly-philosophical meandering around Hollywood cliches to a predictable conclusion.

It's certainly worth seeing The Circle for the impressive technical filmmaking, but that might be the only thing to impress in the end.