That's a lie! It is a movie, but it is not rated. Though it's a foreign film (Mexico), it takes place in Las Vegas, Nevada (US) and all of the dialogue is in English. The title caught my attention, because is strikes a resonance withe the Rene Magritte painting, The Treachery Of Images, which shows an image of a tobacco pipe with the words below "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" ("this is not a pipe")... because it is not a pipe, it is an image of a pipe. Cool concept. After watching the film, I'm not so sure that is the reference in the title. Anyway, the story is about a man sitting in his Las Vegas hotel room waiting for the world to end (it's presumed in the story that the entire population of the planet knows that the end is coming and at what exact time, though there is very little contact with the world outside the hotel room) and talking to himself trying to figure out who he is.
I was happy to see Edward Furlong in the movie (I didn't notice his name in the credits before I saw his face on the screen), because I loved his previous roles in Terminator 2 (as John Connor; and I will always attach his face to the character over the other two actors) and Animal Factory. You may also know him from Pet Semetary 2 and American History X. Unfortunately a lot of his dialogue (or maybe I should say "monologue", since he was 3 of the 4 main characters) felt flat and/or forced. This is a huge detriment because a) the vast majority of the lines in the movie were his and b) a lot of his lines were supposed to be emotional outbursts. I want to blame this on the script itself as opposed to on Furlong itself, but I must admit it's likely that he couldn't get into the role as much as needed. But the lines themselves were often wannabe-anarchic rants about "the Man" and "the System" that complained vaguely about how we're held back by the fat cats, but that proposed no solution, nor delved in deeply enough to convince me that the writer was invested in the ideas. It felt more like they were trying to emulate discontent. Anyway, the dialogue through the first half or so of the film is between the character we accept as the main Peter (Furlong's character) trying to be rational and figure out who he is (he has amnesia, though you as the viewer forget it pretty quickly because it has so little impact on the rest of the film) while a Kid Rock-looking version of himself is also in the room guzzling whiskey. Before long, I realized that these are his Ego and his Id respectively. Take any intro-psychology class and you'll be able to guess who Furlong's third character in the story will be. Also appearing in the movie is Edi Gathegi, who looked familiar but I couldn't place at first. He was Darwin in X-Men: First Class and one of the mean vampires in Twilight: New Moon. His character seemed like a decent guy but has pretty much no character traits to speak of, so that's another of the rapidly amassing weaknesses of the film.
The one thing I did like in this movie I did really like was the cinematography. It's one of those more subtle features of a film, so it won't jump out at you right away, but the inside of the hotel room is shot in black and white with really sharp detail. There are a lot of great textures in the room and the shadows make great contrast. Almost like in Sin City (weather you liked the film or not), almost any frame of footage is visually striking, amazingly composed and beautiful enough to frame on your wall (maybe careful choice of which frame in Sin City if you're not a fan of the blood). Overall, I'd give the movie 1 star. I'm pretty sure that's the lowest rating I've given any movie so far. To be fair, unlike some of the other 2-star movies I've watched, I didn't want to strangle the cast, but it was pretty disappointing that the only redeeming quality was the pretty pictures. If you're planning a party like a rave or something, and you need motion images to project onto a wall while music is playing, you could use this film as one of them and it would probably be an excellent choice... but I can't think of anyone I'd recommend to watch this movie for its own sake. So maybe the title is true after all.
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