Im Banne des Entführers

I enjoyed this move a lot. I found the story line very good and well acted especially by Joanna Kerns. The story is not your typical family captured movie, but instead it seeks to develop more understanding of the characters, especially the family. The story follows a young family who are taken captive by two criminals, played by John Stamos and Chad lowe. Only downfall I thought was the acting of Stamos, who does not play the bad guy very well - at least in this movie. On the other hand, I was very impressed with Chad Lowe in this movie. He nicely plays the roll of the second criminal, who is very much under the control of the Stamos character. A very good movie, I highly recommend it.

Having seen innumerable thrillers, many of which were TV-movies, and even more of those being very bad. This isn't bad, but it's not great either. It's somewhere between good and bad; lets call it "decent". The film makes a few mistakes, some of those being typical low-budget/TV-movie/generic thriller mistakes... I think the biggest mistakes was casting that guy who played Uncle Jesse on Full House(John Stamos) as the main bad guy... who could be scared by that guy? The plot is good, and the pacing is acceptable. The acting ranges between decent and bad. The characters are well-written and credible. I liked the way the film continued showing what happened to the main characters after the hostage-taking; normally you just see the villains being caught or killed, and then you're supposed to figure out for yourself what happens to the hero and heroine, how they deal with the emotional trauma... I liked that this film, for once, showed how it effected the characters. The film was apparently based on a true story, which, I suppose, makes it all the more realistic and frightening in a way. All in all, not a great film, but good for a viewing or two, if you can see it for free. I recommend it to fans of thrillers and hostage-dramas. 6/10