 Trapped (2002) Charleze Theron is the wife whose husband, a doctor and pilot, flies off for a weekend convention in his private plane, leaving Charleze and daughter Abby (Dakota Fanning) alone. Soon enough, Kevin Bacon appears at the same time Abby disappears. Bacon's great at being a bad guy, as in Footloose and He Said/She Said, this time an angry ne'er-do-well who enlists his brother (Pruitt Taylor Vince of the eternally wandering eyes) and wife (Courtney Love) in a series of perfectly planned schemes that guarantee its victims won't ever seek justice. What's lovely about this tense little spinnygig of a movie is that the family refuses to be victimized, and each of them, including Abby, is willing to go as far as the kidnappers. By contrast, the viewer feels some sympathy for the plight that motivized the kidnappers. The movie builds to a pleasantly large-scale climax, as did I while watching Charlize Theron conceal a scalpel between her buttocks. In the minus column, a few plot developments are pretty obvious, and ultimately it's just a thriller, no more/no less, that happens to have a better than average script. But decent character-based thrillers come few and far between these days, so the next time you're "Trapped" in the aisles of your local Smash Hits Video, and feeling "strapped" for a good rental, and not wanting to be "raped" by another "zapped" "blockbuster," try a helping heaping of Trapped. Then again, maybe my standards have been "crapped."
Review by Crimedog |