Watching QUINTET is not unlike watching a group of people playing a word game in Portuguese, or some other language you do not understand. You get the idea that they are playing a game, and if you watch closely enough, you may just begin to understand the rules. But, why bother, since it is clear you can't join in and you wouldn't want to if you had the chance.

Director Robert Altman is not one to beg an audience to like his films, let alone understand them. Sometimes he lets you slip into the picture to be a part of the crowd, like in M*A*S*H, NASHVILLE and A WEDDING, films so full of hubbub and orchestrated chaos, one or two more bodies in the scene wouldn't make much of a difference. And other times, he seems to resent the fact that someone might even be watching his film; as in IMAGES or THREE WOMEN, where the stories are almost personal monologues made for an audience of one, Altman. With QUINTET, Altman seems to purposely dare anyone to become involved with the narrative.

You can't depend on Altman to do the logical or the expected, which is sometimes the thing that makes his films so remarkably iconoclastic. But sometimes doing the unexpected isn't daring, just dumb. For instance, in QUINTET, we are introduced to a young woman who is apparently the last person on earth capable of getting pregnant, and she is, indeed, with child. This last ray of hope in a decaying society is almost immediately extinguished; Altman doesn't even wait until the end to play his last depressing card in this elaborate nihilistic and pessimistic tale. He lets us know how empty and meaningless life is right off the bat. Brave? Maybe. Stupid? Definitely. Devoid of a purpose, he tries to build a story on a rapidly melting iceberg, all the while reminding us how pointless the effort is.

For the record, QUINTET, can at least claim to be prophetic. The story is centered on a treacherous game played by the various bored characters. It is a form of TAG (the assassination game): a handful of people target each other for elimination, each as a would-be assassin and each as a would-be victim. Two or more can form alliances to kill a third. As they die off, new targets are assigned. Whoever lives, wins. All of this happens at some exotic, inhospitable wasteland. It is, to a great extent, an extreme, sci-fi version of "Survivor" -- minus the commercial plugs and faked "reality."

It is not a bad concept for a sci-fi epic. A post-apocalyptic setting, a microcosm of the world (the cast is pointedly multinational), a game where no on can be trusted or least not for long, and where no one really wins. Literally a cold war. A steely eyed director with a taste for dark humor and violent invention could have a field day. The mystery in QUINTET is not in the game or how it is played, but in why it exists it all. If the game "Quintet" is a metaphor for life, then Altman, seems to see nothing in the material but a chance to show life to be an empty, meaningless game -- a conclusion as obvious as it is untrue. Given the lively, albeit cynical nature of the rest of his diverse films, I don't believe that Altman believes in QUINTET either. And if Altman has no faith in his material, why should we?

I had never heard of this movie until I saw it in an "obscure sci-fi" list. That was surprising, because it sounded like it was right in my wheel house. I love 70s post-apocalyptic sci-fi, I love Paul Newman, and I love Robert Altman movies.

For the record, I loved Zardoz, which is generally regarded as another high-concept misfire, so I had hopes I would like this one in spite of the suspiciously low Rotten Tomatoes score.

Unfortunately, RT was right. This was just boring and terrible. Basically, an ice age has enveloped the Earth and everyone passes their time playing a game called Quintet - and people get killed over it. That's it; that's the plot.

The whole thing had the feel of a pilot for a TV show that was never picked up. You know, like maybe in the next episode, something interesting would happen. There definitely wasn't enough there to stand on its own.

On top of everything else, it takes itself really seriously, so it even fails in the "so bad it's good" category".

I can't recommend watching this movie for any reason whatsoever.

During a future ice age, dying humanity occupies its remaining time by playing a board game called "Quintet." For one small group, this obsession is not enough; they play the game with living pieces ... and only the winner survives.

That isn't my synopsis of Quintet , that is an anonymous explanation of this film I found online and whoever wrote it deserved credit for making a terrible film sound exciting and let me tell you , this is more than terrible .

I have no idea what Paul Newman was thinking when he agreed to star in this film . I know he made a movie with Robert Altman a few years earlier and I can only image he was doing a friend a favour because he couldn't have read the script .

In my pursuit to watch every Paul Newman film , not all have been classics . Some have been very average but at least they have had the great man at the helm to make them watchable. Even Paul Newman couldn't make this film watchable.

Quintet is two hours of waffle about a game that the viewer could never understand and has some of the worst dialogue I've heard in long time .

The set looks terrible. Maybe they found it in a cupboard from the set of Dr Who from the 60's ? They also smeared the edges of the camera lenses with Vaseline to make it look colder . I just wish they had smeared the entire lense so we didn't have to see this horrible mess of a movie .