Trapped

Love the beginning. The premise of the movie is set up beautifully, tightly, but a garbled ending with too many plot lines begun in the last third of the movie dooms the project. It dissipates interest when a director arbitrarily introduces motives that had not been foreshadowed. Competent actors in what is eventually a lifeless vehicle, despite the chase, collisions, smoke and noise.

This is the kind of story we have seen too many times.Even the "new" element -the victim needs medicines- has already been used.In "Verdict" (André Cayatte,1974),for instance, Sophia Loren abducted a judge's wife who was a diabetic .I felt sorry for Kevin Bacon ,a great great actor who is not always given the parts he deserves -as for instance in "mystic river"- All is finally too predictable and the film is handicapped by poor acting by Courtney Love (whose part is uninteresting anyway,it resembles those of Claire Trevor in films noirs).The best sequence remains for me the one when Bacon and Theron pretend they are lovers,the only really suspenseful moment.The doctor character is completely incredible:this frail young man suddenly doing aerobatics is too much !

I hadn't even heard of this movie and was surprised to find not one or two but 5 great actors in this movie. And I can see why. This is a smart thriller about a kidnapping. This sort of starts off as a typical Hollywood blockbuster and it certainly ends like one but the story and the way it unfolds is very good.

This was a strong script with beautiful cinematography (again, in Vancouver), great acting. Theron proves here once more that she is a strong actress with much skill and much more potential. To boot, this has a really great action sequence near the end. A good, entertaining movie, this is a definite watch.

8/10

Average. The movie is full of clichés and most of all, the ending is totally unrealistic and overblown.

Otherwise, if they had stuck to the basic plot, this could have been a nice little thriller, especially because on average, the acting was pretty good (especially Charlize Theron and Kevin Bacon). As usual, for some reason Hollywood producers (or Directors) feel it necessary to cram movies with tons of unnecessary subplots most of the time, as well as add minutes of ridiculous 'action scenes' which usually make the films look unreal and unbelievable to the audience. Do they really think the average moviegoer is a moron? In this case, the ending definitely ruined what could have been a good thriller...

Rating: *** out of ****

One of the more pleasant surprises of the year, Trapped stars Kevin Bacon as a clever kidnapper who gets more than he bargained for when he and his partners (Courtney Love and Pruit Taylor Vance) hold a rich couple's (Charlize Theron and Stuart Townsend) daughter for ransom. Director Luis Mandoki knows how to pile on the tension to this chilling premise, delivering genuine suspense and thrills every minute without losing momentum. The story even holds a few decent surprises that caught me slightly off-guard, if not necessarily shocked.

As well-tuned as the direction was, what impressed me the most were the performances. The central story focuses on Theron and Bacon, and both make for one of the more effective protagonist/antagonist duos in recent memory. Dakota Fanning also shines as the kidnapped daughter; this is one of the best performances from a child actor all year (the other is from Fanning herself in the miniseries Taken). Stuart Townsend and Courtney Love aren't as effective as Theron and Bacon, but come through with solid performances.

Trapped is still a very flawed movie, considering the script is hardly original and the subject matter itself is a little unsavory and disturbing. The tit-for-tat matches between kidnapper and hostage can get a little repetitive, but the fact that it revolves around three pairings does add more tension to the proceedings. Still, the movie nicely builds to its thrilling conclusion, a climactic sequence that is a bit overdone but nonetheless exciting. It's a pity Trapped was ignored at the box office, since it's easily far superior to recent similarly plotted kidnapped thrillers such as Don't Say a Word or Along Came a Spider.