Brendon Jones It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Roman Sampson One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Marva It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

george.schmidt 21 EYES (2003) **1/2 Rebecca Mader, Chance Kelly, Nestor Serrano, (voices of : Fisher Stevens, Michael Buscemi, Shae D'Lynn) Gimmicky yet affective heist drama with a unique spin: telling the crime thu the eyes of 2 off-screen police detectives attempting to piece together the jigsaw puzzle of a diamond heist where an inside job looks to be the m.o. A few clever twists and turns and the back and forth banter by world-wearily sarcastic Stevens and Buscemi boosts the otherwise predictable yet compelling screenplay by Sean Murphy and director Lee Bonner suggests a blend of Bogart flicks with a dash of Tarantino wisdom of honor among thieves.

pheyrman I saw "Replay" on video at a friend's house. I hadn't been planning to watch a movie, but I came in just as it was beginning, and didn't leave my seat until the film was over.I was watching it on a TV screen, just like the cops were. The people who saw it in the theatre liked it, and I'd love to see it that way, but it certainly works well on the small screen. I found myself talking back to the cops as they made assumptions, interpreted movements, gathering and discarding as they groped toward a solution.I didn't find myself being as detached as one previous reviewer, though I can see the detachment theme. Surveillance films are distant by nature, but they are only a starting point here, as are the cops. What this film is about is how observers try to separate themselves from what's observed, and the successes and failures inherent in that. Through the whole film I was more and more drawn in, and the magnet was the human beings on the screen. The mundane nature of the presentation of violence only accented the human price of the crime.

openeyes Two detectives assigned to watch twenty-one security camera tapes of a violent but seemingly open-and-shut jewel heist discover that seeing isn't necessarily believing in this fresh and unique film recently placed in evidence at the DC Independent Film Festival. Sounds like an open-and-shut movie? Not so. This movie has a hook: We never see the detectives. We only hear their running commentary as we watch the tapes along with them. Everything we see is as new to them as it is to us which gives the audience a chance to figure out the crime before them."Replay" is a movie where perspective is everything, and the film makers boldly maintain that perspective even if it means letting the movie screen go completely blue, like a home VCR, while the detectives change tapes. They replay some tapes. They slow things down. They speed things up. They sometimes pause a frame to talk about what they are seeing or make a phone call. In a sense, this is the very antithesis of a "motion picture." Yet it works, and not just in some theoretical realm. This film is spared the fate of being an esoteric art house novelty by its wicked sense of humor. The unseen detectives, played by Fisher Stevens and Michael Buscemi, are often very funny -- flailing both the innocent and the guilty, the living and the dead, with their dispassionate, black humor.Strangely, however, this black humor is symptomatic of either the film's greatest failing or greatest success depending on your point of view. A film's success is usually predicated on the audience's emotional response to the characters, but in "Replay" it is hard to bond emotionally with the characters you see on the screen. I found my normal emotional response, even to the most horrific events, filtered through the dispassionate perspective of the detectives. Real life homicide detectives arrive at the scene of a crime after the violence. They don't see the passion, just the bloody aftermath. Nothing they can do will bring the victims back to life. Their job is to simply put the pieces together and assign blame. That's what they -- and we -- do here. We don't love the people we watch scurrying about the home and office . We don't hate them either. We just study them, hoping that they will give up their secrets. Many police procedurals let you see the world from the detective's perspective, but this film lets you experience it.Did I solve the crime before the detectives? I'm not saying, but it ultimately doesn't matter. The journey was as entertaining as the destination.

MF210 My Rating: *** out of ****.Like the first reviewer, I also saw Replay at the Annapolis Film Festival. There were a number of short films before it; some of them were good and others weren't. Nevertheless, Replay is a solid film that is definitely worth a look.The way Replay is presented is an interesting and unique way. Its the story of two detectives investigating a murder case through a series of security tapes. However, Replay shows the detectives point of views when they are watching the tapes. This gets the audience involved in solving the case with the detectives.There is no doubt that the success of the film comes from the filmmakers. Its a nearly flawless edited film, Sean Murphy(the editor) clearly knew what he was doing. The screenwriters bring some witty comedy into the investigation. The director of the film (I cant remember the name) does an excellent job.Since Replay is always focused on the security tapes, we never get a glimpse of what the two detectives look like. However, the actors are given dialogue to act with and they give personalities to their characters. Even the supporting characters like their boss and the secretary display personalities.Replay does have a flaw and unfortunately its not a small one. There is a scene in the investigation I dont think should have been shown. The scene kind of made the movie predictable in who the guilty one was. Thats the only mistake the filmmakers make, if it were not for that Replay would have received a higher rating. However, it is an entertaining and interesting film.