I've been somewhat fascinated over the years with film depictions of college. Higher education has become a rite of passage for greater and greater percentages of Americans, yet it's strange that so few movies seem to get college right or accurate. The Tenth Circle, a low budget melodramatic mystery soon to be released on home video by Sony, is yet another example. Early in the movie, we are introduced to top-billed Kelly Preston as Laura Stone, an English professor reviewing Dante's Inferno with her students. And yes, the film's title is an allusion (or should that be an addition?) to the nine concentric circles of hell in that Italian mainstay of the literary canon. To give her students a sense of the suffering in the ninth circle, Stone has them remain frozen as she walks around the room - a room, I might add, that has nine posters for each level of hell. The students are in various positions, some sitting, some standing, some fumbling with their computers. She finally calls time, and her students seem to act like this activity provided some kind of insight into Dante.

Give me a break.

Well, I don't want to fixate on a small scene. The Tenth Circle, overall, would have been better suited if it had a dimwitted pun for a title from a different literary author, Charles Dickens. This is very much A Tale of Three Movies.

For the first 20 minutes or so, The Tenth Circle seemed like it should be watched by the denizens of The Inferno. It's painfully bad. Not only are we introduced to Mrs. Stone but also Mr. Stone (Ron Eldard), a sensitive comic book artist who plays housekeeper when he isn't doodling with his pencil. The movie forces us to endure flashback scenes of how the Stones met that are laughably inept and poorly conceived. The Stones have a 15-year-old daughter, Trixie, a seemingly innocent young girl who is struggling to get through a speech she has to give about her family. Yes, a fine example of public high schools challenging their students, apparently.

The Tenth Circle, however, makes a sharp U-turn in quality as it focuses on the soul of the movie - Trixie - after she's delivered her speech. Britt Robertson, who played one of the daughters in the criminally overlooked Steve Carell vehicle Dan in Real Life, really shines in this role. Upset that her boyfriend Jason is now seeing another girl, her freewheeling friend Zepher concocts a morally dubious way of getting back at him. The end result, after an alcohol and drug-filled evening, has Trixie leaving a party claiming Jason has raped her.

The Tenth Circle then takes a number of interesting turns, as events spiral out in unexpected ways, with buried lies, love affairs, and a murder / possible suicide all coming to a fore. For nearly an hour, I became rather impressed with this little movie. Its revelations provided an intriguing albeit far-fetched mystery, and Robertson delivers a fine performance. She should have been top-billed in this movie, especially since Kelly Preston's Laura Stone character is largely absent for large spans of the movie. One particularly impressive scene has a bundled-up Trixie walk out into a field blanketed with snow, fall, and then cry out in despair. It's reminiscent of the wintry oppressiveness that Jerry feels with his iced-over car in Fargo, but it works here as well.

Unfortunately, once everything is revealed, The Tenth Circle ends in a far-too-long and rather smug episode of sanctimonious drivel spilled out by the characters. And yes, the teleplay by Maria Nation based upon a book by Jodi Picoult forces in the coda of Dante's Inferno, just to make sure the tired allusion is hammered in one last time.

It's patently clear that The Tenth Circle is television territory: a number of periodic fade-outs suggest commercial break placements. If you can be patient with the first part of the movie, there's quite a bit to recommend. However, the film's inconsistency undoes its overall effectiveness, and by the end credits, you'll wonder whether you would have been better off reading Jodi Picoult's bestselling novel instead.

The DVD

Video:

Sony gives The Tenth Circle an anamorphic widescreen presentation with a 1.78:1 aspect ratio. The film looks fairly good - with nice colors. Wintry outdoors shots are captured with a blue tint that helps set the mood well.

Sound:

The sole audio track is a serviceable though hardly dynamic English language Dolby Digital 5.1 affair. As this is primarily a talk-heavy melodrama, it works suitably enough. Dialogue is always clear.

Optional subtitles are available in English and French.

Extras:

When the disc is played, a commercial for the blu-ray format precedes the main menu. This commercial is also available through a Previews menu option, along with trailers for The Lazarus Project and Passengers.

And that's it for extras.

Final Thoughts:

The Tenth Circle has a pretty good 50-minutes worth of made-for-television quality melodrama and mystery - unfortunately that 50 minutes is sandwiched between a laughably bad introduction and a sanctimonious conclusion. Overall, the film's worth a look, but it's no Dante. And given the DVD's lack of significant extras, The Tenth Circle warrants a Rent It recommendation only. I have a feeling you may be better off reading the Jodi Picoult novel that it's based off of instead.

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