Opening just 16 days after his much ballyhooed Waking Life, director Richard Linklater's decidedly lower-key Tape is in many ways similar to Life, yet it's also incredibly different.  Both films offer more dialogue than your typical feature, and both were shot using handheld digital video cameras. But where Life was more focused on flashy animation techniques and what seemed like hundreds of roles, Tape is an intimate, in-your-face, big-screen version of a play with just three characters.

The action takes place within the four walls of a ratty Lansing, Michigan hotel room that could double for a porn set.  It's cramped, it's seedy, and it's initially inhabited by Vince (Ethan Hawke, Training Day), a volunteer firefighter and part-time drug dealer from Oakland.  Vince is in town because his best friend has directed a film that's screening at a local film festival, and, in advance of his pal's arrival, chugs multiple cans of beer and does pushups in his boxers, like he's preparing for some kind of drunken prizefight.

When Johnny (Robert Sean Leonard, Driven) shows up, the two begin to tussle after going through the typical it's-good-to-see-you routine.  Johnny, who appears to be a grounded guy, chastises Vince for his reckless, violent lifestyle and for recently jettisoning a three-year relationship with a nice girl back in Cali.

But then Vince steers the topic of conversation toward an incident that happened over a decade ago and was quickly swept under the rug.  It seems Johnny had a drunken sexual encounter with Vince's high-school girlfriend, Amy, who later declared the incident to be date rape.  Vince keeps hammering away at Johnny until he finally confesses, only to find out that Vince has been recording the entire conversation.  To make things more interesting, Vince has already gotten in touch with Amy (Uma Thurman, Sweet and Lowdown), and she's on her way to the hotel room.  And to make things really interesting, Amy is an Assistant District Attorney in Lansing.  The proverbial fur begins to fly.

The ultra-low-budget (it cost lest than $150,000 to film) and unconventional shooting style really brings out the best in all three of Tape's actors, but it helps that they've all worked together before, too (Hawke and Thurman in Gattaca, Thurman and Leonard in Hawke's upcoming Chelsea Walls, Leonard and Hawke in Dead Poet's Society).  Linklater and cinematographer Maryse Alberti (Velvet Goldmine) turn the claustrophobic hotel-room setting into one of the more handsome films shot on digital video.  The camera's quick, stomach-turning pans from character to character help make the room seem much more cramped than it really is.  The decision not to use any music is also a wise one, as it helps to add to the film's uncomfortably raw reality.

Granted, the story, which was based on Stephen Belber's play, doesn't quite approach the quality of, say, The Big Kahuna, which was also about three people stuck in a hotel room together, but Ethan Hawke is no Kevin Spacey (and Robert Sean Leonard, thankfully, is no Danny DeVito).  Also worth noting is Leonard's first line, "It's great to be alive!" which possibly refers to the death of his character in the last film in which he shared screen time with Hawke.

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for language and drug content