End of the road for kidnappers

Mar 14, 2003

After months of blockbusters and romances in the world of cinema, it is time to sit back, relax and watch a movie that will not literally take your breath away.

Film: Trapped
Stars: Charlize Theron, Courtney Love, Kevin Bacon
Director: Luis Mandoki
Screenplay: Greg Iles, based on his own novel
Running time: 105 mins.
Rating: R for violence, strong language and sex
Showing at: Cineplex, Garden City today
Preview by: Kalungi Kabuye

After months of blockbusters and romances in the world of cinema, it is time to sit back, relax and watch a movie that will not literally take your breath away. Yes, it is time for one of those ‘fillers,’ the ones that precede yet more big movies. And that is what Trapped which starts today is –– a filler for Al Pacino’s Simone, which for unseen reasons, will not make it to the silver screen this week.

In the movie, Kevin Bacon and Courtney Love play Joe and Cheryl Hickey, a pair of kidnappers who, helped by Joe’s cousin Mike (Pruitt Taylor Vince), have worked out what they believe is a quick, can’t-fail money-making scheme.

They target rich families whose children they kidnap and then demand for ransom money. It has already worked four times, netting them more than a $1m, so one more will not hurt, will it?

Next target is Will and Karen Jennings (Stuart Townsend and Charlize Theron.) Karen is a textile designer with an angelic 8-year-old daughter. Will is a successful doctor who has just invented a wonder drug. The ideal victims, right? So why is it that they decide to fight back?

The kidnappers’ mode of operation involves separating the victims. So when Will is out of town attending a medical conference, Cheryl worms her way into his hotel room by posing as a medical groupie.

Meanwhile, Joe and Marvin kidnap the couple’s child Abby (Dakota Fanning).

Marvin spirits her away to another hideout. Joe is left with Karen, and starts playing mind games on her, of course with sex at the back of his mind.

But this is no ordinary family, as the kidnappers quickly find out. Abby is an asthmatic who could die without her medicine. Then Karen almost castrates Joe during an attempted seduction, and Will injects Cheryl with a paralysing anaesthetic. And then it really gets nasty, with some more revelations of what may be the real reason behind the kidnappings.

Trapped was released last year, when child kidnappings happened to reach an all time high, so the question on whether it should be released at all was raised by several people. In the end, it was released quietly without sneak previews or premiers. For a fill-in film, though, it drew mixed responses from critics:

“Though there are many tense scenes in Trapped, they prove more distressing than suspenseful,” says Mary Kallin-Casey of Reel.com.

“I felt trapped and with no obvious escape for the entire 100 minutes,” says Rick Kisonak of Film Threat.

“A relatively effective little pot-boiler until its absurd, contrived, overblown, and entirely implausible finale,” says Mark Dujsik of Mark reviews Movies.

“There is no pleasure in watching a child suffer. Just embarrassment and a vague sense of shame,” says Stephen Cole of Globe and mail.

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