User Reviews

My wife and I saw this online (Amazon, Netflix, don't recall which). While I can't really say it is "enjoyable" because of the subject matter, it is a well-made and worthwhile story. Again Ryan Reynolds shows us he isn't just a pretty face.

It is a Canadian production throughout, and set on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. Ryan Reynolds is a working man, a landscaper, Matthew. He has a bright, pretty daughter who is 9, just about to turn 10. Going home after his daughter's ice skating practice one day he stops briefly at the local pie shop for treats, his daughter stays in the back of the extended cab truck, and when Matthew returns she is gone. No idea where she is.

Rosario Dawson is the police chief of the small community, he goes there to report his daughter missing but instead of doing an immediate all-out search they question him over and over, seemingly assuming he wasn't telling the truth, that perhaps he was responsible for her being missing. New investigator, Scott Speedman as Jeffrey, is especially distrusting.

(Honestly, this part of the movie I disliked, it didn't seem realistic to me that the law-enforcement officers would immediately take that stance, plus I am not a Speedman fan, to me he is a lousy actor.)

Anyway that's the way Egoyan wrote the story, the daughter really was kidnapped, and the story spans about 8 years. We don't actually find out what all she was subjected to but it is hinted that she was used for online porn, where children are forced to "perform' while subscribers watch live. And as she got older was used to help recruit younger children.

The movie is primarily about the father, Matthew, never giving up, continuing to hold hope that his daughter was alive and he would find her. It is a bleak movie in many ways but we found it a worthwhile watch.

SPOILERS: We learn relatively early who the kidnapper is, and that he has installed hidden video equipment to be able to watch the parents real-time, as part of his perversion. When the daughter is about 17 and being cooperative he allows her to meet with her dad, in a secluded location, in the snow. When he tries to take her away the kidnapper comes out of hiding and shoots Matthew with a tranquilizer dart. Eventually Matthew used clues his daughter gave him to track down the guy, who dies in a shootout, but frees his daughter. The daughter is finally safe.

The Captive's two best qualities are its snowy setting and Ryan Reynolds' lead performance. Otherwise, the film is an overlong and jumbled thriller, whose gimmicky structure fails to hide how far- fetched and formulaic the thriller component is once linear. The film's director Atom Egoyan has made many poorly received films recently, including Devil's Knot and now this feature, which was booed at the Cannes Film Festival this year. Egoyan is Egyptian-born with Armenian parents but was raised in Canada. He has set this film in Niagara Falls but it was primarily shot in Sudbury, Ontario. It's an icy cold, wintery location, the barrenness of which projects the loneliness and sense of loss Egoyan has tried evoking in the narrative's themes. It is a unique setting, one which required special measures for shooting by the film's crew, and makes the film's opening scenes promise a much richer film than what's delivered.

The film is about the kidnapping of Cass (Peyton Kennedy), a young girl who was sitting in her father's car when he went into a store but came back to find her missing. The father is Matthew (Reynolds), who continues searching for his daughter nine years after she has vanished and in spite of his relationship with his wife Tina (Mireille Enos) breaking down. The film switches between Matthew's current pursuit and the start of the investigation, instigated by two detectives. Nicole (Rosario Dawson) is a senior detective specialising in the Child Exploitation Unit and hunting down online predators and child pornography rings. She keeps in contact over the years with Tina and is partnered on the case with Jeffrey (Scott Speedman), a rookie to this department, fearless in stirring suspects and getting under their skin. He tries making a suspect of Matthew and also develops a relationship with Nicole. Meanwhile, there are strange scenes where Cass (now played by Alexia Fast) is grown up and still alive in the home of her captor Mika (Kevin Durand). Rather than using her for sexual pleasure, she is encouraged to read poetry and listen to classical music and become bait for other children online.

The film begins well, not only because of the setting, but because of the quality of Ryan Reynolds' performance. It is a change in pace and tone, which he signposted with his strong work in the film Buried. His distraught, frustrated emotions, particularly with the way he is treated by the police, are believably conceived but he is the cast's only standout. The film also drifts away from him with the plot and changes in perspective. The plot structure shuffles back and forth so frequently between time periods, with little warning, and for no reason other than to disguise how this is a highly formulaic thriller. The film's pacing is crippled by this editing technique, dragging the film even though it is less than two hours long, and any tension is dissolved. Egoyan has said he is celebrating the human spirit, but his ideas about being drawn into the search as much as being devastated by it don't come to fruition or feel transcendent. The search isn't very different from other kidnapping films like Ransom or The Changeling, where parents never give up on their lost children.

It is not even a plausible or authenticated crime film. Egoyan has said he did not want to show any explicit material because it is more unsettling not seeing it but imagining it. The difficulty of dealing with the material is understandable, especially from a commercial standpoint. But the compromise he has made is substituting explicitness for ridiculous plot points and developments. The most absurd episodes of his overcrowded screenplay are shared between its voyeuristic components, like the criminals monitoring Cass's mother with hidden surveillance equipment, and also a second kidnapping when the criminals target Nicole herself. It is a very strange and forgettable thriller, which shows how difficult it is dealing with a troubling subject matter while remaining within the frame of the kidnapping subgenre.

Mixed feelings! The Captive is a Canadian made movie. I found The Captive payed homage to the 1980's Telafilm made in Canada movies. There is a cold feel with the environmental shots. The director made cold direct characters with blunt direct dialogue. A Scanners and Videodrome feel. Similar to a Swedish film with a dreary story line in a cold environment. What worked: Ryan Reynolds has a strong performance. A few heart pounding scenes. The tree scene sticks out. What did not work: Captive's story dragged and had lapses in parts. The creepy guy just did not sit well in the film. Unless that was the director's intentions. A few lose endings, which left the viewer hanging. Was the guy who owned the company involved and his wife too? I give The Captive a six out of ten. I may have to re-watch this movie.

Cass is kidnapped by weirdo Mika just short of her 10th birthday. She was in the car with her father Matthew who left her alone for a few minutes in a desolate, snowy parking. What happens next is short of risible: Matthew is treated as a suspect by the police because he had a bar brawl as a teenager.

From a single violent episode in your youth to degenerate father who sold his daughter to a pedophile is a long stretch, nonetheless the police does not investigate and Tina, Matthew's wife, also immediately blame and despise him for having "lost" their daughter.

All this is told in non-linear fashion, with scenes jumping to the past to the present, eight years after the abduction, when a distraught Matthew is allowed to see Cass by Mika, who in the meantime had surveillance cameras everywhere around Tina, to gloat on her pain. To this weirdness, add a bunch of most inefficient police detectives, lead by a female cop who gets herself caught by the same pedophiliac ring...

Besides the annoying non-linear narration, the lack of explanation about anything is extremely annoying: how did Mika kidnap Cass? There were no traces in the snow. And it happened really fast... Why did Mika kept spying on Tina? Why would he risk kidnapping a cop? Why should we care about the relationship between lady cop and her colleague? Why Tina immediately blames Matthew? Whatever... Ryan Reynolds does a good job and he gets the two stars, the rest is cra°.

It's hard to count the ways this movie sucks. First of all let me just say that except for Rosario Dawson, who didn't sell her roll as a lead detective, the acting was superb. Ryan Reynolds killed it when it came to portraying a grief stricken father. The other actors were very good too. The biggest problem with this film was the logic and believability of the plot. Apparently, even the writer and director did not even understand the motives behind the bad guy's actions. And their actions are outrageously bizarre and confusing. And not in an entertaining way. I am not going to try to sneak in a spoiler here but let's just say that at the end of this flick, you'll feel as if you wasted your time. Watch it if you must but don't say no one warned you ;)

This is a slow paced thriller about a girl who was kidnapped at the age of 9 and kept in captivity in a basement for 8 years. The story follows the implications of her kidnapping for her parents and the local police division that never stopped looking for her.

The nature of the kidnapper and his motives is expressed right from the beginning, but you may miss some of them because of a somehow confusing time-line of events and narrative. Later everything will be presented even more clearly but numerous plot holes will annoy you and ruin the experience of the movie.

The acting is sub-par and the cast far from suitable. Ryan Reynolds is like a fish out of the water and fails to find his place in the movie from the start. Kevin Durand is a caricature of a master villain and Scott Speedman (as one of the police detectives) acts more annoyingly than the kidnapper himself.

Overall "The captive" fails to captivate the audience with a premise that in general it could produce an interesting movie about a delicate subject...

At the beginning, you sense great possibilities and the plot looks exciting; then, flop down!!! To start, there is no connection between the mother working as a housekeeper and the rest of the story about a girl locked up. You figure it out and join the dots.WHY?? Why can't the story be told smoothly? The rest is a bunch of little stories put together with the only connection being that you see the same actors so, in your mind, you figure it out and fill the holes. Why? Another example, Rosario's big poster is shown at the beginning with no explanation whatsoever while Vince looks at it pensively. Who is she? a dead wife? A sister/cop killed in action? Mystery! Later on, you see Rosario but there is no connection between all of that and the charity event. Suddenly, Jeffrey and Nicole are kissing and seem to be having a relationship whereas, in the previous scene, he is just joining the force. When did that happen? You only discover that 8 years have passed in their casual conversation. And this goes on and on. There are so many holes you could have played cartoons during the movie. Like I said, there was a great possibility but somebody goofed big time.

As many reviewers have pointed out this is not a new idea. Prisoners did it and did it extremely well. This doesn't even hold a candle to Prisoners. That being said, it is a very effective thriller with a lot of mood and great cinematography. It utilizes the cold and very bleak Canadian North to really put you in the mood of the emotions in the film. The issue is that Atom Egoyan has a reputation of being an "artsy" sort of film maker. I have hardly seen any of his work but I know what he aims to do. I saw nearly the exact same problem when watching his film Devil's Knot last year. That film should have been an amazing thriller based on an incredibly fascinating crime but it was stumbling and slow and missed the point. The Captive does the same sort of errors. It seems like a simple story about how losing their daughter sends a couple spiralling and two police detectives struggle to close the case when it becomes apparent the child is still alive. Then for some reason the story becomes complex and twisted and jumps back and forth in time and throws turns at you that don't make sense and by the end of the film you just don't even understand who is who or what is going on. There is nothing wrong with how the film is made, its just that Egoyan tries too hard to make this unique fascinating piece of art instead of focusing on a story.

Ryan Reynolds is one of my favourite young actors and he has been for years. He is extremely versatile and I love seeing him in this type of role when he does comedy so well. He also does high intensity emotion very well and playing a distraught father suits him. He definitely is a big reason to see this though he sort of takes a back seat in the middle of the film for some reason. He is great in the film. Mireille Enos is decent as his wife who also shows some great emotion in her scenes. Reynolds is significantly better than she is though and their chemistry isn't great so she is just okay. Rosario Dawson and Scott Speedman are the two detectives involved in the case. They are both okay but very underdeveloped characters. I feel like there is so much more there (think Gyllenhaal in Prisoners) but they mostly ignore them as characters. Both could have been very good if more time had been spent focusing on them. Kevin Durand certainly has the perfect look down for playing the creepy psychopath that has taken their daughter. Durand doesn't get a lot of time to establish his character but he looks the part and that goes a long way. Alexia Fast plays their daughter in the future (oldest version of her) and is okay but seems almost monotone at times but that could be attributed to her situation. Certainly Reynolds is the absolute highlight of the cast and the film.

What should be a very taut thriller has an awful lot of plot holes and patching done. Patching by ignoring certain details or rushing through a lot of things. The film feels very slapped together in many ways. Its one of those movies (and I see a lot of them like this) that has so much potential and you can see that but it only makes the mistakes even more glaring. The ending climax really picks up and there is an exhilarating car chase and then after that it was like someone yelled "We're out of money" and they through all pages out except the last one and filmed it quick and movie over. Never mind the biggest fact that you're supposed to buy that this girl is missing for 5-7 years-ish but no one looks even remotely different other than her who has doubled in age (but goes right back out to the ice rink when she gets home.) It is an extremely mediocre effort for Egoyan and probably only worth a four or five out of ten but Ryan Reynolds gives it a slight boost and it wasn't a total waste of an evening. If you're a fan of his then its worth seeing, otherwise Prisoners buries this film. 6/10