Smart concept becomes torture instead
Talk about an experiment that goes horribly wrong.
Stress Position centres on a bet between filmmaker A.J. Bond and a close friend, actor David Amito and an experiment in which each will have a chance over the course of seven days to break the other through psychological torture.
The subject is somewhat timely, considering the controversy in recent years around the practice of the U.S. intelligence agencies to capture, confine and torture alleged terrorists at Guantanamo Bay or at various secret prisons around the world, though its topicality is getting close to its best-before date.
The story — yet another one in which the main players use their own names — begins well enough with both characters as talking heads facing each other in profile or the camera directly and talking about the impending experiment.
Not surprisingly, it doesn’t take too long before things go terribly awry.
But the greater problem is in Bond’s script, which squanders a promising concept by wandering off the clear path ahead.
First, let’s start with what works. The set — the confinement cell, as it were — is really quite cool, with a rather forbidding metallic sculpture at its centre, white walls and two-way mirror from which the experiment- ers can watch the action. The tormenters are quite sinister in their white garb and bloated metallic masks.
Bond, who also has some experience as an actor, is well suited to the mad scientist role. There’s a hint of something steely and barely suppressed sadism in his performance that’s effective.
Likewise, Amito as David has a nice regular guy appeal that allows the audience to emphasize with him as Bond ratchets up the pressure in order to get him to disclose a secret password. But Bond’s script ends up letting everybody down. Rather than sticking to the premise and allowing the story to progress, Bond makes a hash of the whole thing. By the time it’s Bond’s turn in the torture cell, the story has lost its cohesion and the audience is no longer sure (or terribly concerned) about where things are headed. Bond’s script introduces the concept of a deeply buried secret held by each character that will eventually be disclosed, meant to provide some sort of revelatory insight. Here’s a poorly guarded secret: this could have been a much better film.