The Elizabeth Smart Story

Emmanuel and his wife Wanda Barzee are religious zealot drifters. Emmanuel cleans up and encounters Lois Smart while street preaching. She's out with her kids and she recommends him to her husband Ed. He starts working for the Salt Lake City family as a handyman and fixates on daughter Elizabeth Smart. He soon disappears and 8 months later, he returns to kidnap 14-year-old Elizabeth. It's the start of a terrifying ordeal for the entire Smart family.

This is a solid ripped-from-the-headlines movie. The adults are good solid actors. Dylan Baker and Lindsay Frost are especially good playing the most intense parts. Their complicated relationship with the police has nice tension. Tom Everett is good and the girl who plays Elizabeth is good enough. The production is Canadian TV like many of this type of movies. This is not going to win any awards. It lays out the case well. It's a compelling story told well enough by a good cast.

This movie I have thought has been a great movie. It heartwarming yet touching. The characters who portrayed in the movie did a way beyond excellent job. I could feel the pain and suffering of the family, and the intenseness Elizabeth must of felt from her captors.The girl who played Elizabeth did a superb job and so did the girl who portrayed Elizabeth's sister. The couple who portrayed her parents did an awesome job. I like the man who portrayed Ed Smart. You could really feel his pain in the movie. Though I firmly believe the filmed was filmed too close after Elizabeth's return, I worry about how Elizabeth may feel now that this movie was shown. She has gone through as some of us may know, beyond torture then what was shown in the movie. Or maybe her seeing this movie is a healing process. We will never know what Elizabeth personally went through, but at least we know she is safe and warm with her family, with still a long struggle ahead.

I stumbled onto this movie accidentally in a motel while searching for something else. Because some things were familiar, I might have seen it years ago but forgot (though I obviously didn't review it here). On the other hand, some of it wasn't familiar at all.

I don't want to criticize the performances of the actors playing Elizabeth's parents. Their depiction of what the parents were going through could have been accurate. But something just seemed off about the father.

What stood out the most for me is the way the family celebrated holidays. They no longer seemed to be grieving, but remembered the happy times and hoped for Elizabeth to return. Surely their faith played a role, and these were wonderful scenes.

I found it curious the police sketch artist was not called in sooner. But Detective Mitt Romney (seriously, if someone wants to just cast this actor in the role based on appearance, he's perfect) didn't seem all that interested in trying to solve the case. The cops tried too hard, according to this movie, to blame the parents or a man who seemed innocent. Weren't the poor parents going through enough? Tom Everett as the kidnapper was a very convincing wacko. As much as the Smarts showed what faith in God should be, Emmanuel showed what it shouldn't. And Emmanuel's female companion just stood there and took the abuse from him. Elizabeth was too scared of what might happen to her family, but she did try to get away.

I saw this on Lifetime, and while this is not a monumental achievement, that's where it belongs.

In June 2002, 14 year old Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped at knifepoint from her home in Salt Lake City by the deranged Brian David Mitchell and taken as his wife/concubine/sex slave. Mitchell – who called himself Emmanuel – was a religious nut whose wife Wanda Barzee was totally under his control.

When all the leads to Elizabeth's probable abductor dried up, she was written off as dead by the police, or as good as. She was found 9 months later a mere 16 miles away. This TV film was released less than a year after she was found; Mitchell would not stand trial for more than 7 years due to issues relating to his competency; it was only then that the full shocking truth came out. Leaving that aside, "The Elizabeth Smart Story" was made not only as an historical document but for a wider audience, so the multiple rapes Elizabeth suffered would probably have been omitted anyway. Rather, the film focuses on her family and partly on the deranged Mitchell. The film-makers have probably taken a few liberties with the story, but what is not shown because of the chronology is what a truly remarkable young woman Elizabeth has become, indeed there seems to be a pattern with such cases that the more shocking the suffering of the victims the more they rise above it, while those who suffer trivial or even questionable sexual assaults continue to make the most noise like the empty vessels most of them are.

Having been raised by a mother that was exactly the same as Elizabeth Smart's kidnapper ... I can tell you that this movie gave me a new set of nightmares to deal with. Which speaks volumes in regards to the acting and directing. I would imagine that Elizabeth Smart's life must also be full of nightmares ... and this will continue throughout the remainder of her life.

As seems to be the norm in these abduction cases, the police continue to make life even worse for the victims of these crimes against families. In this case, even though the abduction is witnessed by Elizabeth's younger sister ... the police still go after the parents. On the other side of the coin, it often is a parent that is the guilty party ... Jon-Bonet Ramsey ... but, with a witness, in this case ... a lot of time was wasted on trying to pin the crime on the parents. The person they tried to finally pin it on looked nothing like the real monster, as said by the only witness. Unfortunately, the police pretty much ignored that witness.

Believe this ... there are plenty of people, out there, that are exactly like the abductor of Elizabeth Smart. BELIEVE IT!