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Trapped
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This
film begins inauspiciously. We are hurled into an orgy of hand-held camera
moves, fast edits and gross colour effects as Joe (Kevin Bacon) successfully
completes his latest kidnapping scheme.
In
snatching children from temporarily separated couples, Joe and his associates,
Cheryl (Courtney Love) and Marvin (Pruitt Taylor Vince), manage to achieve
three things simultaneously: reaping of vast monetary amounts, sexual menacing
of the mother, and humiliation of the father.
Mercifully,
the stylistic overkill settles down after the prologue, which is designed to
show us how well Joe’s schemes usually go. But next time is going to pan out a
little differently. Not only are Wil (Stuart Townsend) and Karen (Charlize
Theron) smart, tough cookies, but their snatched child, Abby (Dakota Fanning),
has an asthma condition with which Marvin is ill-equipped to deal.
Director
Luis Mandoki clearly enjoys breaking away from his usual sentimental fare, such
as Message in a Bottle (1999). He delivers the action in a fast, absorbing way, unafraid
to go full throttle on plot developments that some viewers will find absurdly
contrived.
Telephone
communication plays a central role in the texture of events. If Joe does not
ring his colleagues every thirty minutes, someone is going to die. Later, in a
splendidly overwrought sequence, Wil keeps turning off the engine of his
seaplane and sending it earthward in order to disguise the noise of its engine
during tense phone exchanges.
Greg
Iles’ script, adapted from his novel 24
Hours, politely withdraws from some of the less comfortable or reassuring
possibilities of the story. Atypical for an intimacy
thriller like this, the marriage of Karen and Wil is not besieged by
malaise from the outset. Wil is a paragon of husbandly virtue when confronted
with the overflowing sexuality of Cheryl. Marvin’s dealings with Abby are
expunged of any perverse dimension.
It
is only in the interplay between Karen and Joe that the film momentarily heats
up. She lets him begin his usual dance of sexual menace, meanwhile dexterously
hiding a razor blade in her underwear. What follows really makes Trapped worth seeing.
MORE Mandoki: Born Yesterday © Adrian Martin February 2003 |
