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New releases 'Trapped' captures the attention
The kidnapping tale may be exploitative, but it has a resourceful cast and screenplay.
By PHILIP BOOTH, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published December 26, 2002
[Photo: Columbia Pictures]
Kevin Bacon plays a would-be kidnapper and Charlize Theron a targeted parent in Trapped. |
Trapped (R)
Luis Mandoki, the director of Angel Eyes and Message in a Bottle, turns in a modestly budgeted but surprisingly effective thriller about a revenge-driven man (Kevin Bacon) and his troubled wife (Courtney Love) attempting to carry out the perfect kidnapping. The victim: A little rich girl (Dakota Fanning of I Am Sam). The objective: $250,000, and a chance to right a perceived wrong.
Trapped is manipulative, and patently exploitative, playing on primal fears, but it holds viewers' attentions thanks to Greg Iles' tightly structured screenplay, creative handheld camera work and the resourcefulness of a cast that also includes Bacon, Love, Pruitt Taylor Vince and, as the targeted parents, Charlize Theron and Stuart Townsend.
The cataclysmic finale, an interstate crash involving a helicopter, multiple cars and a jackknifing semi loaded with logs, is impressively orchestrated and photographed. The movie's fortunes probably suffered from bad timing: News about real-life child abductions dampened enthusiasm for seeing the same thing on the big screen.
DVD extras: Mandoki and Iles are heard on two separate audio commentaries, both several notches above the average, with insights about moviemaking. The deleted scenes, including an alternate ending, are less than revealing, as is a routine behind-the-scenes feature.
Rent it if you enjoy: Panic Room.
Blood Work (R)
[Photo: Warner Bros.]
Clint Eastwood is a retired FBI profiler in Blood Work, which he also directed. |
Clint Eastwood's latest directorial effort suggests that his instincts as a filmmaker, and an actor, may no longer be reliable. Blood Work is a sluggish, loosely plotted crime story about a retired FBI profiler (Eastwood) tempted back into police work to track down a serial killer.
Would you believe Jeff Daniels (My Favorite Martian) as a laid-back, harmonica-playing California boat bum with a secret life as a murderer? It doesn't work. Neither does Eastwood's performance, as a recent recipient of a heart transplant, somehow still able and willing to do the old running-and-shooting routine. The actor, 72, looks tired and out of place as a geriatric Dirty Harry, and it may not just be the requirements of the role.
Blood Work, also starring Wanda De Jesus (Ghosts of Mars), Paul Rodriguez (Ali) and an underused Anjelica Huston (The Royal Tenenbaums), suffers, too, from dialogue that's delivered by actors talking at each other instead of to each other. "An accident is fate, murder is evil," Eastwood's character says at one point. He's preaching, not conversing.
DVD extras: A puffy making-of-the-movie feature is included, along with extraneous subtitled Spanish-language interviews with De Jesus and Rodriguez. No commentaries.
Rent it if you enjoy: Eastwood crime stories; other tales of old gunslingers called back into duty.
Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever (R)
The explosions are huge and relentless, and the body count is astronomical in this noisy, fast-moving tale of super-tough secret agents engaged in a battle to the death. Why? It doesn't matter.
The stunts, including a sequence centered on a runaway bus, are visually spectacular, feats of technical invention, as opposed to mere digital effects. The acting, naturally, offers the equivalent of video-game characters come to life. So why hire the talented Antonio Banderas and Lucy Liu?
DVD extras: Among the slim bonus items are an HBO throwaway feature and a surprisingly rudimentary video "game." No commentaries.
Rent it if you enjoy: The Transporter; The Matrix; Stallone and Schwarzenegger action flicks; movies about blowing up things.
The Adventures of Pluto Nash (PG-13)
Eddie Murphy plays the owner of a nightclub on the moon in a would-be comedy set in 2087. The latest bad career move from Murphy was one of the worst-reviewed movies of the year, with the New York Post calling it "unremittingly awful."
Rent it if you enjoy: Murphy's other movies (not the good ones); Galaxy Quest.
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