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Review Uploaded
09/30/02

1 hr. 45 min.
Starring: Charlize Theron, Courtney Love, Kevin Bacon, Stuart Townsend, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Dakota Fanning

Directed by: Luis Mandoki

Frank’s film tip: What pithy byline can I come up with when this film’s title says it all? Rather self-explanatory, don’t you think?

There’s one thing that you can say about the generic suspense thriller Trapped in that the title aptly captures the claustrophobic feeling one will get in viewing this uneventful kidnapping yarn. Director Luis Mandoki, who was the driving force behind the 2001 washout crime caper “Angel Eyes”, concocts another tiring and uninviting retread of riff raffish folks involved in a desperate scheme to make outrageous demands at the expense of an innocent child. Trapped feels like some desperate recycled premise that was culled from the inspiration of some old 1970’s television cop series. Interestingly enough, Mandoki’s crime thriller wasn’t available for an earlier screening and purposely kept out of the clutches of the probing public. Usually that’s not a good sign if the studio is reluctant to release its product in good faith while missing the opportunity to gain a sense of feedback. Suffice to say, Trapped is the kind of transparent and uninspired psychological flick that one would pay extortion money just to avoid not going through the rigorous task of checking out this debacle once again.

Originally entitled 24 hours (based on screenwriter’s Greg Iles’ novel), Mandoki’s narrative tells the tale of a trio of habitual kidnappers and extortionists. The so-called calculating threesome include the off-balanced husband-and-wife team of Joe and Cheryl Hickey (the ubiquitous Kevin Bacon and rock ragdoll Courtney Love) and their unsteady hanger-on associate Marvin Pool (Pruitt Taylor Vince). So what’s their expertise at hand? Why it’s bilking cash from wealthy young couples saddled with precious little girls of course! Once the plan is hatched to snatch these impressionable young gals from their well-to-do families, these despicable opportunists boldly ask for the ransom money reassuring their kids’ safe return. Head mastermind Joe deems this practice somewhat of an art form and is psyched to go out on the limb and continue the success of their infectious “crime wave”.

The next target of pursuit happens to be the unlucky Will and Karen Jennings (Stuart Townsend and Charlize Theron). Apparently the Jennings measure up to the preferred prototype of what these three scumbags are looking for—and loaded physician Will and his well-provided loved ones happen to fit the bill. But as we predictably will soon find out is that the Jennings family is no ordinary pushover in terms of succumbing to the twisted criminal ways of this sordid circle of miscreants. After all, it’s their turn to fight back and no one will deny them their livelihood…NO ONE! Hey, whatever…

And so the dastardly Hickeys and their co-conspirator Marvin design their agenda so that the Jennings asthmatic daughter (Dakota Fanning from I Am Sam) is shuffled off to some unknown location while her parents must produce the money before reuniting with her again. And as the saying goes: “there’s no such thing as a perfect plan!” Well, this is certainly the case in obtuse and inconsequential tripe such as Trapped.

Aside from the fact that Trapped suffers from being a half-hearted and choppy quasi-drama, one cannot help but notice the exploitative element of the movie’s thematic overtones given the real-life occurrences involving tragic child abductions that have bombarded the news as of late. To extract a subject matter such as the kidnapping of children is sensitive, tricky and tasteless enough but to try and pull it off in a dreadful and reductive manner such as this uneven exposition seems so inconsolable. This empty-headed swaggering cat-and-mouse thriller is nothing more than an inert diversion at best. Everything in Trapped can be picked apart much like a defenseless Thanksgiving turkey. Whether we’re witnessing the insipid dialogue being spoken or victimized by the poorly lit camerawork courtesy of an errant hand-held camera, Trapped quite frankly is a manufactured mess.

As a filmmaker, Mandokie pretty much delivers a sub par frenzied fable that generates no original thrills or induces any plausible tension whatsoever. The actors fall prey to the rudimentary material they’re handed and there’s no investment in any believable emotional level that’s acknowledged. Bacon taps into his showy psychotic mode reminiscent of his The River Wild stint some handful of years ago. Love and Vince go over-the-top in this bottomless bore of a suspense piece. And Theron gets to echo the heroine vibes that really have no payoff or punch since fellow actresses such as Ashley Judd have done this sort of thing numerous times and in better films to boot. Townsend’s participation in this film is about as useful as a fancy sports car without an engine under its hood. Fanning is adorable and precious as “the clichéd kid in peril”. But then again, aren’t all the button-nosed tykes who are asked to appear in manipulative flicks such as this?

Needlessly barren and glaringly limp, Trapped will be another flat-out forgettable statistic in the field of misbegotten stinkers that already exhausts this type of played out genre. What can one say? If you feel Trapped, then take the rightful measures to free yourself of such movie-related misery.

Frank rates this film: * ½ stars (out of 4 stars)