Three actors yakking in a single drab interior, shot on HD video: It's unlikely this poverty-program recipe has, or ever will again, yield results quite as entertaining as "Tape."

This makes good on that old Dogme promise by discarding the crutches of conventional movie drama and concentrating on the raw essentials of character and story.

A film, which, for all its energy, never quite sparks into life.

It's a wonderfully tense tale, played out with humor and sarcasm.