fedor8 "A secret he would not share. An obsession he could not control. A mystery he dare not resolve." This is TBOR's "grand" tagline. The mystery and the secret aren't nearly as good as you'd hoped for. The movie's premise is just a big, empty promise that turns out to be a typical movie-poster lie.TBOR certainly works very well in the first 20-30 minutes, while the disappearance of the dancer is still a total mystery. Frankly, it should have stayed that way, because the "revelation" was a bit of a joke. Turns out Long was being raped and tortured by three young women. Is that it?, I thought. No mysterious cult, no aliens, no demons, no underground organization, no travelers from the past - just 3 horny women looking for perverted fun. How disappointing. I'd have preferred any of the just-mentioned clichés to this. However, even this puff-of-smoke "big secret" could have sufficed as a basis for a solid mystery/thriller. Alas, it isn't one. The filmmakers opted to turn this into a psychological drama. YAWN.Most of the movie is Long shooting in the dark as he tries to find his female captors. The worst part is that he fails. Even worse than that, WE the viewers never find out anything more than he does. The film ends with cop Friels telling Long to "start from the beginning". What a scam; it's the sort of cop-out ending (with a cop, no less) that almost anyone can come up with. To cop out during the writing process is the easiest solution. The hard option is to actually rack your brains, trying to come up with a unique or interesting twist, or at least a story with a beginning, middle and end. This is definitively an example of very lazy writing. And how does one mask lazy writing? One calls it a "psychological, meditative drama with a message". It's always easy to fool the sheep; after all, the likes of Picasso and Bunuel have been doing it for years. Create nothing and then rationalize it with empty semantics and other well-improvised nonsense. Art in its very nature offers a great opportunity for charlatans to exist in it. It takes a clear and unpretentious head to weed out the crap.Of course a woman would direct and co-write a movie about women who rape a man. It's a role-reversal thing-a-ma-jig sorta deal, like, don't you know? Very deep, like, socially relevant, like, message, that is meant to, like, make us think a bit about the role of women in society and stuff, like, guyeee. The whole victim thing put upside down on its blonde head, like, wow! So deep and stuff. Feminist power!Tom Long is pretty good in the lead role, though. He vaguely resembles the young Malcolm McDowell. There are several actresses from the terrible TV drama series "The Secret Life Of Us" (the hospital nurse and the aborigine girl), which the director was also involved in, plus Nina Liu who starred in a 90s teen Aussie series. This Liu is very attractive and should have been given a bigger role in the movie.Speaking of Liu, if one is to place suspicion on anyone, it's her. She had left Long, just as he was sent to pick up cigarettes. But what's the point in speculating? Clearly, the filmmakers themselves have no clue, i.e. haven't decided who the perpetrators are, so why bother. The end-credits state that one of the three robed women was played by none other than the actress who plays Long's girlfriend. But I'm sure this was merely the director saving money by using a person to play two roles. After all, there is no way that Long could fail to recognize his girlfriend's eyes, voice, breasts, or legs for entire 12 days; they'd been together for 3 years before his abduction.I didn't think that the pornographic nature of some of the scenes was necessary for the story. I believe this choice had more to do with the director's own sexual fantasies and living them out on the screen than anything else that she might come up as an excuse with - something undoubtedly very "deep". Charlatan.In fact, the TV series "The Secret Life Of Us" (no secrets there, though) which Kokkanis also worked on has a barely concealed strain of anti-male sentiment throughout it. This leads me to speculate that the female director particularly enjoyed filming the vibrator-rape scene. Did she drool while filming it? I have no idea what the title of the movie has to do with anything.Still, an Aussie drama without a left-wing political message. That doesn't happen very often these days...

Jan de Vries I was also disappointed with this movie. For starters, the things that happen to him don't seem too terrible to me (Sorry male chauvinist PoV). As is pointedly said by one of the lady captors: "Most men would _pay_ to be in your position". To which he replies "But this is not _my_ choice". OK, OK, fair point, so how bad was it really? Please let us know. But now the kicker: He does not let _anyone_ know, until after the movie-end (unseen). Not his girlfriend, not is mentor, not the police, not anyone. In stead, he comes up with the brilliant plan of f*ck*ng every girl he knows, so he may recognize the tattoo (or something) of one of his captors. I thought he'd just had enough unpleasant sex during the 12 days of his captivity? Isn't it time to take a little break from all that? For me, his, to put it mildly, ill advised actions broke the "suspension of disbelief" of the movie. I took out a book while watching the last half hour out of the corner of my eye.

jeni allenby Apologies to other reviewers here who find terms like "brave" and "courageous" unhelpful - Book of Revelation was all of those things to me, and much more.This film took perhaps the most difficult subject I have seen raised in cinema - male rape and torture by a group of women - and confronted it. From its original source material to its script to its director to its casting - to say nothing of its final audience - it was never going to please everyone. Nor was it going to be perfect. But it sure as hell raised the profile of its subject matter and made its audience think.It is not easy to review in detail, but it certainly is easy to say: seek it out and watch it. Its difficult to watch in places, but it is important both for its subject and as an example of film making. It's director is innovative and always interesting. It's cast is great. It's score ... despite some comments here ... is excellent.I won't provide plot details, there are enough of them in the surrounding reviews. I would like, though, to point out that the original novel was extraordinarily powerful, the technique of a first person narrative with the exception of the section about his captivity (which reverts to third person and so takes us outside the victim's mind) working very well. While this could not be transferred to a screenplay I think the remnants of it are responsible (for some reviewers) for patches of seemingly stilted dialogue where the internal monologue was removed.In regard to the issues of Daniel and his abductors, the book differed somewhat. Although little was given from their point of view, I found the relationships Daniel built with them very important. I regret not only that these were hardly touched upon in the screenplay but that the length of his captivity (which created a longer environment for those relationships to form) was significantly reduced. I would have liked to have seen more of what he experienced in captivity and his dialogues with his abductors utilized, although I can understand why this would have been very tricky. To show the further tortures and sexual assaults he endured - and upped the sensual nature of his captors - may well have made the film unbearable for many, as well as increased the "pornographic" element for those who have sadly seen the film in those terms.But these are small issues in a very powerful film. I found his psychological damage - and the ways (both negative and positive) he dealt with that damage - very realistically portrayed. Why reviewers worldwide have sought - and criticized the film for not revealing - the motives of his abductors amazes me. When are the motives for sexual assault ever given? You get along with your life without knowing them. To me the gender element became almost irrelevant: it was Daniel's journey during and after his captivity which captured, and continues to haunt, me.Sincere congratulations and commendations to all involved.

talkfest Worth watching this film for performances, cinematography and design but not groundbreaking cinema. Great performance by Tom Long so emotional and fragile and it's so convincing the way he internalizes his pain and then self destructs.But I remember seeing some of the issues related to this topic treated on "Law and Order", the TV show, back in 2001, an episode called "Ridicule". A man is charged with murder of a woman and it comes out that he has been sexually assaulted by 3 women and the story revolves around whether it can be classified as rape, if he is sexually aroused. Something largely to that effect. It was nothing like the story of the Book of Revelation and it had a completely different emphasis but it meant that some of the issues on their own, were not new/shocking for me, as I had seen them raised on prime time TV 5 years ago. (Of course no explicit scenes were shown and the story started where TBOR left off and I could go on and on to list significant differences.) But, because I remembered this TV show, I was hoping TBOR would take me a lot further, I felt disappointed by how this particular film had been hyped. I just thought it would make me feel a lot more confronted and moved. Not groundbreaking cinema.I do feel however, that these types of issues obviously need to be continually raised, and debated from different viewpoints, to gradually have a lasting impact on society. It gets it out there, in front of more people who may not have seen the topic discussed at all yet.Great art direction/cinematography and loved Greta Scacchi's portrayal of the Dance instructor too. I thought it was one of her best performances.