Larger text
Smaller text
Print
E-mail
Kidnapping plot gets 'Trapped' in chaos
Charlize Theron and Kevin Bacon in 'Trapped'
Rafy, Columbia Pictures
Most pictures take so long to develop, write, rewrite, green-light, produce and market that getting to release day is like tip-toeing through a minefield.
The events of Sept. 11, 2001, ripped into the release plans and eventual returns for several terrorist-related movies, most notably "Collateral Damage."
A wave of highly publicized kidnappings and child slayings will do nothing for "Trapped," which Columbia, coincidentally or not, kept from everyone's sight until Friday's "cold" opening.
"Trapped" has the single distinction among kidnapping movies to involve three concurrent situations of one-on-one hostage-holding.
Serial kidnapper Joe Hickey (Kevin Bacon), masochistic wife Cheryl (Courtney Love) and Joe's possibly learning-impaired cousin Marvin (Pruitt Taylor Vince) stage their fifth child theft six months after the fourth.
While Dr. Will Jennings (Stuart Townsend) is at a medical conference in Seattle, to which he has piloted himself in his own plane, Joe breaks into Jennings' home in Portland, Ore., grabs Will's asthmatic 6-year-old daughter Abby (Dakota Fanning), and hands her off to Marvin, who drives her to a remote cabin in the Eastern Cascades.
Joe stays in Jennings' home with notions of making distraught mommy Karen (Charlize Theron) his playmate while Cheryl apprehends Will in his hotel room.
Greg Iles adapted his own novel "24 Hours," which is the time frame for each kidnapping, but the deadline isn't given much weight in the story and none at all toward the end.
While the film is all too obviously marking time, two of the three one-on-one pairings turn unnecessarily lurid and nasty. After about 75 minutes, it begins to feel like we're just waiting for Iles to deliver the rest of the script.
It doesn't help that director Luis Mandoki is enamored of shaky, hand-held cameras or that Karen behaves foolishly.
A chaotic climax, hurled from the editing room, costs "Trapped" what little is left of its credibility.
Although we get, finally, a patch of motivation, it's sketched in hazily and never tied to the earlier kidnappings, the outcomes of which aren't mentioned.
"Loose Ends" would have been a better title.
By far, the strongest scenes are those least representative of such movies — the ones shared by the expressive-eyed Fanning, who played Sean Penn's precocious daughter in "I Am Sam," and Taylor Vince, who strives valiantly to build a sympathetic schlemiel.
Those who remember him as Paul Newman's sensitive buddy in "Nobody's Fool" know he has the chops. What he needs is the time and the movie.
| 'Trapped' |
Director: Luis Mandoki
Stars: Charlize Theron, Courtney Love, Kevin Bacon
MPAA Rating: R for violence, language and sexual content
