Seriously, that’s exactly what it is.  It’s not every day that I can sum up an entire article–especially for a movie with a patently preposterous run time of two hundred and eighty eight minutes, but AMC’s The Prisoner (which the guys at Warner Brothers sent a copy of) is exactly that.

A truly massive and thoroughly epic mindbender is truly the only way to describe it.

We join a man named Six, who’s convinced that the life he’s leading is not reality, and that his life in a charming little place called The Village is not really his life.  And the more we find out about Six, and the more we find out about The Village, the more we discover that there’s a whole lot going on under the surface, and that The Village itself is merely that surface.

Ooooh, spooky!  And considering that this is based on an old television show, it’s really not that surprising that the mindbending levels in here are just plain old epic.

In fact, listening to Six’s “niece” explain the intricacies of The Village’s favorite television show, Wonkers, will be a wonderful microcosmic view of the constant skein of twists and turns in which we find ourselves following The Prisoner around.

But there’s a problem here, lingering under that surface–and the problem is for us.  As twisty and suspenseful as this all may be, the payoff…the payoff is really not at all worth what all you’re going to go through to get there.  The third episode, for example, will introduce you to the “undercovers”, a subset of the population that answers only to The Village’s leader, Number Two.  None of the “undercovers” know who the others are, so, as Six points out, everybody in The VIllage could be an “undercover” spying on everybody else.

This is exactly what watching The Prisoner is like–a whole raftload of questions (where are we?  who’s really a spy and who isn’t? why must all food on this island be first wrapped in a tortilla before serving? and I’m not kidding on that one, either, that’s a real question) and not very many interesting answers.  Some, sure, and some more interesting than others, but still…not too many.

But still, there are more than a few people out there who love nothing more than a great and confusing mystery, in the hopes that they can unscramble it themselves before they’re told by the story itself, and in that case, this is a fantastic little title.  Otherwise, sadly, it will be huge, jumbled, and fora sorrowfully disappointing payoff.

The Screenhead Ten Scale is puzzled by the whole thing, but realizes that, as puzzles go, this one couldn’t be much more complex.  And so it gives The Prisoner a six out of ten for succeeding admirably in its primary objective–which is clearly to confuse the hell out of anyone who watches it–but no more than that for not being very satisfying at the end.