PVC-1 by director Spiros Stathoulopoulos is the story of a poor family in Colombia who are attacked on their farm by a group of criminals who are under the impression that they actually have a lot of money.  They demand the money, but when the family tells them they have none, the criminals put a PVC pipe bomb around the wife's neck and tells the family that if they don't get the money to them by a certain time, they'll detonate the bomb.  The family then leaves the farm to find help, which comes in the form of a bomb expert from the army who tries to disarm the device.

This film is an insane achievement.  It's 85 minutes long and shot in one continuous take in real time.  It's really amazing when you think about it.  Every performance has to be perfect or it ruins the whole thing, and to run for 85 minutes with perfect performances, even from the kids...man, that's a real achievement.

Speaking of the performances, they were amazing.  It was all highly realistic and the talent it took to hold it all together for that long...I honestly just don't know how they did it.  It really is a testament to the quality of the cast that they were able to pull that off, and to the film maker for keeping it all together on the technicals.

That said, this movie suffers from one big problem.  It drags...a lot.  It was ok when stuff was actually happening, but there was a whole lot of time where people were just walking from one place to another or when the guy was trying to cut through the PVC pipe to disarm the bomb, it all just took what felt like forever.  While there's something genuinely cool about shooting a whole story in real time, the simple fact is, it gets boring and has you reaching for your fast forward button...frequently.  The whole time I was watching it, I was actually thinking to myself that even though it was cool that it was shot in real time, the story would have worked a hell of a lot better from the viewer's perspective if it had all been cut down to a short.  Maybe 25-30 minutes max.

The film is shot in Colombia, so the actors are all speaking Spanish.  The film does have subtitles however, which are more than adequate in helping you follow along with the story.

While I can applaud the quality of the production and the incredible achievement that this film is from a technical perspective, I simply can't recommend it to the average viewer simply because the pacing is so incredibly slow, causing the film itself to become quite boring in all the times when there's really nothing special going on.  However, if you're more interested in viewing it to observe the technical achievement that went into pulling something like this off, then I can more than recommend it.

The DVD was released by IFC films and is currently available through the usual retail outlets.  If you'd like to find out more about the film, you can check out its page on the IFC website here.