"I'm not dying in a fucking rat maze!" ~ Quentin to Leaven.
Quentin is a character in Cube played by Maurice Dean Wint. He is a divorced cop with three kids. The last thing he remembers before entering the Cube was shaving. He started off as the most level-headed of the group, taking on a de-facto leader role, as well as being the one to test new rooms. However, following Rennes' death, he gradually became more determined to escape and slipped into insanity. He kills Holloway and later Leaven, while also mortally wounding Worth. Quentin ended up dying himself when Worth grabbed his leg to prevent him from escaping, and two shifting cubes between the exit and the Cube ended up bisecting him. He was said to be in his late 20's.
He is portrayed by Maurice Dean Wint, who also voiced Onslaught in Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes and the Shadow King in the '90s X-Men cartoon.
Personality[]
Quentin is a gruff and aggressive man who takes charge and undertakes most of the dangerous tasks. He is said to be in his 40's. At first, Quentin is portrayed as calm and collective, urging the other survivors to use their heads and work together. Shortly after Rennes perishes, Quentin begins to toughen up and takes charge of the group. Despite keeping up his leadership attitude, he slowly begins to lose hope and sanity.
He has little patience with Kazan because of his unpredictable and unusual behavior, even going as far as suggesting to leave him behind or even killing him, especially after almost being killed by a sound-activated spike trap because of him making a sound. Eventually, Holloway begins to argue with Quentin and gets on his nerves. After this, he decides to drop her outside the Cube, killing her. This marks his spiral into complete madness.
From here on, Quentin is more aggressive, violent and irrational, and ends up killing the rest of the survivors, even trying to kill Kazan, an autistic savant, just so he could be the only survivor. To the end of his life, Quentin died a violent, bloodthirsty monster. He also has perverted and possibly pedophilic tendencies, attempting to force himself on Leaven, believing that a man and a woman are two halves of "the equation".
Story/Plot Significance[]
In the start of the film, Quentin, Worth, Holloway, Rennes, and Leaven meet. None of them know where they are or how they got there. Quentin informs the others that some cubes contain traps, which he learned by nearly being killed by one. Rennes assumes each trap is triggered by a motion detector and tests each room by throwing one of his boots in first. Leaven notices numbers inscribed in the passageways between rooms. Quentin, a policeman, recognizes Rennes as "The Wren", an escape artist renowned for getting out of jails. After declaring one room trap-free, Rennes enters it and is subsequently sprayed with acid, killing him. The others realize that there are different kinds of detectors, and Quentin deduces that this trap was triggered by heat.
Quentin believes each person has a reason for being there. He is a police officer, Leaven is a mathematics student, Holloway a doctor and conspiracy theorist who thinks the "military-industrial complex" is responsible for their predicament, and the surly Worth declines to talk about himself or his past. Leaven hypothesizes that any room marked with a prime number is a trap. They also find a mentally challenged man named Kazan later on, whom Holloway insists they bring along.
Quentin enters a room determined safe by Leaven's calculations but is nearly killed by a razor-wire trap. Tensions rise due to personality conflicts and the group's lack of confidence in Leaven's system. Quentin provokes Worth into an argument about finding the exit, and Worth insists there is no escape. Worth admits that he designed the Cube's outer shell for a shadowy bureaucracy. He denies knowing anything else about it but guesses that its original purpose has been forgotten and that they have been imprisoned within simply to put it to use (so that the organization could avoid admitting that the Cube was a waste of time and money). His knowledge of the outer shell's size allows Leaven to determine that each side of the Cube is 26 rooms across, for 17,576 rooms in all. She guesses that the numbers indicate the Cartesian coordinates of the rooms. The group starts moving toward the nearest edge as determined by her theory.
Believing themselves near the outer wall of the Cube, they find that each neighboring room is trapped. Rather than backtrack, they decide to make their way silently through a blue-colored room whose trap is activated by sound. The passage is without incident until Kazan makes a noise during Quentin's transit of the room and Quentin is almost impaled by spikes. Upon reaching safety, he threatens Kazan with violence, terrifying him. Holloway defends Kazan and gets in a provocative argument with Quentin about his marriage. Quentin slaps her in response, further increasing the group's tension.
Worth opens a door under Quentin's orders. On the other side, they find a wide, unlit gap between the Cube and the outer shell. Tying together their clothing to make a rope, Holloway swings out to investigate but nearly falls when the Cube quakes violently. Quentin takes the opportunity to drop her to her death, and he tells the others that she slipped. After coming to terms with the tragedy, they take a nap to recover from exhaustion.
Quentin wakes up early and carries Leaven to another room without alerting the others. He tries to persuade her to abandon the others with him. He then makes a sexual advance but she rejects him, and Quentin becomes aggressive. When Worth finds them and intervenes, Quentin beats him savagely and drops him through the floor hatch. Worth laughs hysterically at what he finds, being Rennes' corpse. The group is demoralized by the thought of having been wandering in circles. Worth has an epiphany, realizing that the rooms themselves are moving periodically relative to each other, and this movement is responsible for the rumbling sounds and violent quaking.
Leaven deduces that traps are not tagged by prime numbers, but by powers of prime numbers, which are too big for her to mentally calculate. While arguing with Quentin, Leaven realizes that Kazan is an autistic savant who can quickly do prime factorization mentally, much to Quentin's surprise. Leaven determines that the numbers indicate the positions within the Cube where each room rests between moves through the Cube. The room that connects to the "bridge" leading to the only door in the outer shell proves to be the one in which the group first woke up. The alignment they need to escape will come in two moves.
Worth preemptively ambushes Quentin and leaves him behind unconscious during room movement, but Quentin (covered in blood as if to imply he killed other unknown survivors) somehow finds his way to the bridge and suddenly reappears and fatally stabs Leaven. Worth warns Kazan to get out of the room as he tries to fight Quentin, only to be fatally stabbed as well. Quentin notices the room is about to move, and moves to kill Kazan and grabs him by the shirt, but with the last of his strength, Worth grabs Quentin's leg, pinning him in the narrow passageway as the rooms shift, painfully ripping Quentin in half. Worth crawls next to Leaven's body and dies from his stomach wound. Kazan walks into the bright light in the bridge before the movie ends.
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