First off: I am German and i've seen the original Das Experiment many years ago. I wouldn't call all Americans dumb because they remake foreign movies. In fact this movie is better in some ways, like the acting of Forest Whitaker, which reminds me like a evolution from a stay-at-home-dude to his interpretation of Idi Amin.

But the movies share a big problem. The original experiment was the Milgram Experiment, which was in the 60s if i recall correctly. The difference to the movie experiment is, that they originally used completely sane men. So that's why this study had such a big impact. They stopped the experiment at a earlier stage, but they were right at losing control. So in the movies there are psychopaths, Nazis, misfits and even an emo. I think that weakens the message of the movie. It should not be saying: Maniacs and psychopaths are capable of violence, oppression and humiliation. The message of the movies should be: Every man is capable of violence, oppression and humiliation. But it is possible to prevent such things if we ever arrive a level of empathy, philosophy and post-capitalism, then we could prove that humans are more than monkeys with funky weapons.

So apart from the message the movie is OK. Don't expect an action flick, so everything's fine.

This is perhaps a 10-star movie, but the over intensity prevented me "loving" this movie to a simply "liking" this movie. An experiment in the human psyche is conducted using a prison setting where one third of the participants are guards and two thirds are inmates. They are divided up according to their interview, part of which we get to see as a way to quickly build character. Adrien Brody is a prisoner. He is the ultra liberal atheists. Forrest Whitaker, a religious fellow who believes in absolute right and wrong becomes one of the guards. The two briefly talk and connect prior to the interview process.

The participants are promised a $1,000 dollars a day as long as they follow the rules. Breaking the rules must be dealt with "commensurately" and within 30 minutes or else the red light comes on, the experiment is over and no one gets paid. At this point I suspected two things: 1) The red light would never come on no matter what they did and 2)There were some shills within the group. I was wrong about the second one.

While one of the rules was "no violence" the guards gradually test what constitutes violence. The red light becomes their "God" who "approves" of their action by inactivity. Forrest Whitaker eventually becomes the leader of the guards, even punishing his own guards who have compassion toward the prisoners. Adrien Brody becomes his rival as the leader of the prisoners.

The acting is good. The action is at a good pace. There is human torture and beating as one might expect.

This is a remake of a German movie that was made almost a decade earlier. It had been a while since I saw the original, but I did remember it fondly. I did rewatch it to get a feeling of what differences we have here or rather the Americans made. Mostly they make the movie inferior to the original. Maggie Grace never is inferior in my book of course, so I'll count her as a plus. But even her character is more or less sidelines, considering the very active role her "counterpart" in the original had.

Adrien Brody is good but his motivations are a bit unclear. And it is especially so, because part of his backstory were stripped to make this leaner and meaner I reckon. Only the former sort of succeeded, with this running almost half an hour less than the original. The introduction to the characters is nice and all in one piece with just some occasional "dreams" to escape the one location set up once the experiment starts. This also strays away from the original. Generally speaking it is not bad if a remake tries something different. It may give something to viewers of the original ... so while this lives off the real premise of the German original and therefor isn't really bad, it never reaches the heights of the movie from 2001 ... watch the one that was there first, to get the full experience. Good cast here overall though