This movie is made with mastery and excellent timing. It draws the audience in to the point where you may get completely lost.A near 60 year old man loses everything in his life, his job and his family and is now losing his mind. The film is not told in an especially emotive way, which is why it may be difficult to follow. When this man, John V. takes it upon himself to crusade against a large company, his internal life runs away with him with imagined friendships and conversations, until he goes over the edge.This film is extremely well made, from the art direction to the lighting to the costumes and especially the work of the actors, director and writer. The twist in the story will stay with you for a long time and will make you think about the characters, the director, the writer and about yourself.

Two of THE great actors of Dutch/Belgium cinema are opposite each other in this drama/thriller based on actual events: Jeroen Krabbe and Jan Decleir.This movie (based upon actual events) tells the story of a man who enters a building with the intention of keeping one of the Philips directors hostage, only to find he is in the wrong building, since Philips moved to the building next door. The movie is mainly a character study and isn't so much about the hostage taking itself as about the events leading to the man's action.SPOILERS******SPOILERS******SPOILERS*******SPOILERS**** The events leading to the main character's action are not so much what actually lead to it, but the movie's point of view is from the main character himself. We see things through his eyes/memories and we are dealing here with a man who gradually but surely starts to lose every sense of reality. All the meetings with the Philips director are more or less figures of his imagination, something I understand from other reviews, not everybody is grasping, at least not immediately.END OF SPOILERS******END OF SPOILERS*******END OF SPOILERS***** I feel this is a very good movie indeed carried by two great actors who both make the most of their roles. Both actors deserve a chance in international big movies. Jeroen Krabbe has played in several of them in the end of the 80's, beginning of the 90's (No Mercy, License to Kill, the Fugitive) and plays a role now in the new Deuce Bigalow movie with Rob Schneider, but please please let someone give this man an interesting character role in a quality drama and the same goes for Jan Decleir who has been offered some international roles, but turned them down, cause from an actor's point of view they were not the most interesting, witch is a daring thing to do, but maybe a good thing to. These are two fine actors who can really bring a movie to a higher level as they prove with this movie!

The movie is simply excellent. The plot is intriguing and it really makes you wonder of what is true. Is it really all the fantasy of John Voerman, or is Philips director kleisterlee really lying. Philips has always been a company with a lot of secrets and a certain "mist" around its tech knowledge.. and in this story it all comes together.... the movie shows a drama of a lonely bus driver who commits a desperate deed and works with flashbacks to how it all came that far. The viewer always remains in doubt of what is true and what isn't....The cinematics, the music, the script, the brilliant acting(!!) it all comes together in a marvelous movie with shocking end (even if you know the story from the newspapers) In one word brilliant movie!!!

This simply is a great movie! I voted 9 out of 10. It shows that it's possible, even in the Netherlands, to make intelligent movies about actual topics or events. For ages the only themes in serious Dutch films were the Second World War and sex. Luckily this is changing now. For instance last year we saw the comedy "Shouf Shouf Habibi" about the problems of immigrants from Marocco in Holland, and the murdered filmmaker Theo van Gogh made "05/ 06" about the murder of the politician Pim Fortuyn. "Off Screen" is also based on true events. Two years ago a confused man (a bus driver) took hostages in an office building because he wanted to speak to the top executive of Philips Electronics, about the introduction of widescreen television. He thought this was one big scam, and that the consumers were mislead, because in Holland there are hardly any broadcasts in the widescreen format. (In fact he was right of course!) It was a bit of a sad event, because just a few days before the Philips offices were moved to an adjourning office building. It ended with the confused man committing suicide. The film was made on a very small budged, but that's hardly visible. The film focuses on the life of the divorced bus driver. It shows the psychological process and the supposed encounters he had with the Philips executive that led to his actions. I say supposed encounters, because the best thing about the film is that it never becomes exactly clear what's real, and what's not. Did things really happen, or is it all just in the mind of the bus driver? In this aspect the film reminded me of films like "Swimming Pool" (Francois Ozon), "Als Twee Druppels Water" (Fons Rademakers), or even "Big Fish" (Tim Burton), "The Usual Suspects" (Brain Singer) and "Fight Club" (David Fincher). The two main actors are absolutely great! In their separate scenes, but also in their scenes together there is a real chemistry. The Belgian actor Jan Decleir (as the bus driver) is always good. Jeroen Krabbé (as the Philips executive) has made great movies, but also a few awful ones. Here he shows he still is a one of Holland's best actors. Let there be made more intriguing movies like this, and let there be less money wasted on big budget productions (to Dutch standards that is) like the recent turkey "Floris". And let Paul Verhoeven finally make the definitive and absolutely last Dutch movie about WW II, the long awaited "Zwartboek"!