Customer Rating: 
Summary: Entertaining despite the contrived plot
Comment: I stumbled across this movie on a DVD rental site and found it to be surprisingly entertaining. For those of you who are familiar with Arturo Perez Reverte's works, this movie is based on his novel titled 'The Flanders Panel' which in itself is a good thriller, though you do have to be familiar with the game of chess as that's crucial to the plot.
This movie contains an early, rather tomboyish Kate Beckinsale, though still very much spirited. She plays an art restorer who finds there's a secret message in a piece of art that she's restoring, a panel that has been in a particular family of noble lineage for 500 years. She enlists the help of her ex-professor/ex-boyfriend Alvaro, played by Art Malik, who later turns up dead, presumably of natural causes. Well, turns out that Alvaro is the first in a series of deaths and Kate's character tries to decipher what's going on, with the help of a street chess player [based on the assumption that the deaths are related to the game of chess depicted in the panel].
Anyway, the story though based on an interesting premise, soon turns out to be contrived, yet that doesn't detract from one's enjoyment of this movie. There are quite a few sexy scenes here, and quite a bit of nudity as well - Kate flashes bits of herself, and sometimes almost all of herself unabashedly, and this is early kate, very young and tomboyish, with a cropped hairstyle, yet displaying the peaches and cream beauty that still defines her today.
The murderer in the story will be quite apparent to most viewers before the ending, yet I would still recommend it for its interesting premise and sexy bits.It might also interest some viewers that another of Arturo reverte's works, titled The Club Dumas was also made into a movie, The Ninth Gate [with Johnny Depp] which is a sort of literary/supernatural thriller.
