Film Reviews

Trapped

• Rating:
• Director:
• Starring: Charlize Theron
• Details: US / 99 mins / (15PG).

Think a discount version of Ransom by way of Panic Room - minus all the vaguely interesting parts - and you're some way towards imagining the horrors of Trapped. With a title that will probably summarise the feelings of those who have parted with their hard earned to see this tripe, Trapped is based around a simple premise. Joe Hickey (Bacon) is a kidnapper who, along with his wife (Love) and cousin Marvin (Pruitt Taylor), believes that he has a foolproof plan for extorting cash from rich couples. While the husband is away on business, they kidnap the pair's only child, and Hickey stays with the wife, as she organises the money and cedes to his perverted desires. The Jennings - Will (Townsend) Karen (Theron) and daughter Abby (Fanning) - are next, but the bad guys don't reckon on the feistiness of this particular clan.
And neither should you if you have any sense, as Trapped is a terribly formulaic thriller - a movie with a very questionable morality and a dubious sense of reality. Theron and especially Bacon deserve better than the pithy script grants them, but spare a thought for Stuart Townsend. Although his lines are amongst some of the worst I've had the misfortune to encounter, he is inexplicably bad as an adventure lovin' anaesthesiologist. Yes, it's that kind of movie.

Review by Garreth Murphy