The Tortured

A case of 'Don't judge a book by its cover' I fell for that… It has a similar feel to 'Law Abiding Citizen' if you have seen that.

Basically, it is couple seeking revenge on the man who destroyed their lives. They 'achieve'this in brutal circumstances so be warned.

I would seriously recommend viewing this movie. You might think it isn't cutting it for you but watch until the end, I will predict that 8/10 people will say at the end 'Actually, that was quite good' However, it felt like it was missing something to give it that extra quality… maybe the timing, it was relatively short which may have been the missing part for me.

All in all, a good watch and worth the time.

At the first 25 minutes the movie try desperately, with a series of crude flashbacks, to convince the audience of something the actors themselves could not: To believe that they are suffering for the lost of their child. And even that isn't enough to make believable an apple-pie family turning the new Hewitts. An unbelievably long hour later the film was over with a very confusing but mildly interesting 5 minutes ending. One moment you are wondering "how that will turn out?", the other, roll credits. Through out the whole movie, flashbacks continue to appear over and over and over again showing nothing relevant to the plot or the characters psychology. The torture parts are also not terrible enough to please the "Painjunkies" out there, which makes sense if an upper-middle class family would perform it, but the characters most of the time make it looks like its not a big deal to do that to a person. The script is very poorly directed. Even for a TV Series Director. It takes too long to begin, and not long enough to finish. Climax of the story happens in 5 minutes. If the movie was turned into a 15 minutes episode of "Tales from the Crypt", it would be nice enough. But surely not far a movie. To the fans of Twisted Pictures, I advice you to wait for the Next Saw.

The movie is not as bad as I expected seeing the reviews. I did not see the twist coming actually, but other than that a quite basic one for a boring weekend night.

The Tortured (2010)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

After their child is kidnapped, tortured and murdered, the grieving parents (Erika Christensen, Jesse Metcalfe) decide to kidnap the man responsible on his transport to prison and teach him the true meaning of torture. THE TORTURED has a good idea (what would you do to the man who killed your child) but sadly the execution is so bad and so full of plot holes that at times the film becomes rather laughable. I think a lot of the blame has to go towards the director because the film just isn't intense, isn't scary and it's really hard to connect with the parents. As a parent of a three-year-old, what happens to the kid here would be one of the most horrible things you could experience and I understand where the parents would want to seek their own revenge. The problem is that the parents here do so many stupid things that you really have to wonder who the filmmakers were trying to fool. One of the biggest problems is when the parents kidnap the prisoner, they seem to overlook their fingerprints would be all over the stolen car. There's a manhunt for the prisoner and even though the U.S. Marshalls are told where he's at, it takes them forever to actually get there. All of this leads to an eventual twist in the story and I will admit that I found this to be the best thing in the film. Still, with so many other plot holes it was just impossible to take the film serious. The torture scenes are all pretty graphic but I'd say no more so than what you've seen in films like SAW or HOSTEL. This film, however, doesn't work as a drama, a thriller or as a horror movie. It's just too flat all around and it just never comes to life.

It's garbage like this keeps people from seeing GOOD movies like "SAW". The only thing that saved this film for me was the company I was with while watching it. Had I been by myself, I would have turned it off halfway though. Really dumb. Don't waste your time. The only reason it gets 3 stars from me is because the ending actually surprised me a little bit. But not enough to recommend it to anyone. So here it is: A young couple lose their very young son to a killer who kidnaps and seemingly beats him to death. (It doesn't really get into HOW the boy dies.) Anyways, the guy gets caught, and while he is being transported to prison, the van driver gets sick (because the boys parents poisoned him) And pulls off to the side of the road. The boy's dad then jumps in the still running van and takes off to kidnap the killer and get his revenge for killing his son. The guy crashes the van, tossing the killer out onto the road. They pick him up and take him to a special lair where the sad parents proceed to torture the guy for a couple days. The ending WAS a little surprising, which helped a little. But all in all it was a waste of time and a little upsetting that a movie like this can make the good horror movies look so bad.