Encurralados

Abby (Maria Bello) and Neil Randall (Gerard Butler) seems to be the perfect couple in Chicago with a lovely daughter. He's climbing the corporate ladder. Neil is going to spend the weekend with his boss. Abby is going to see her sister Diane. They hire Helen Schriver from the agency to babysit Sophie for the night. On the drive to Diane, mysterious Tom Ryan (Pierce Brosnan) comes out of the backseat with a gun and news that Helen has already kidnapped their child. He starts telling them what to do like withdrawing all their cash but he throws it all into the river. He tells them to do what they're told for 24 hours and they'll have their girl back.

There is a lot of unnecessary breathlessness and yelling overacting. It's all intended to raise the tension, but it's too much of a movie thing. Gerard Butler is pushing too hard. His energy diffuses the tension rather than raise it. Quiet anger would be so much more effective. Pierce Brosnan and Maria Bello are a little better. He does menace well and she's the loving wife. This has the potential for a good 3-person morality play, but director Mike Barker works overtime to pump up the artificial thrills. I was interested in the mystery of the true nature of the story, but I didn't particularly care about the people. The twist ending is fine but it needed a few more breadcrumbs laid out along the way. More hints about the ending would have made the ending more compelling.

The producers of BUTTERFLY ON A WHEEL (a/k/a SHATTERED in U.S.), didn't have enough faith in their project to seek widespread theatrical distribution of the finished film--even though it had GERARD BUTLER fresh from his box-office triumph in "300". Instead, they went a more direct route--directly to TV on TNT, which seems more like a last resort. Once again, a Gerard Butler film with limited distribution even though co-starred with PIERCE BROSNAN and MARIA BELLO.

Seeing it on TNT, it's understandable that the film had some problems in connecting with a larger audience. Brosnan's villain is below par for the actor and Butler has done better work elsewhere although he gives all his energy to the role of a distraught husband.

The plot is an elaborate cat-and-mouse game that Brosnan plays with the unlucky couple, Butler and Bello. While it does generate a certain amount of suspense, Brosnan's character remains an enigma for almost the whole story. Never once do we get a hint of why he's going to such extremes to torture the couple by demanding that they perform tasks at his bidding. A grungy looking Brosnan makes the villain a very unappetizing psychotic and we're never quite sure about Butler either, an ad agency man who gradually loses his swaggering overconfident manner.

Without giving away more of the plot (except to say that there is a mildly interesting twist toward the end followed by a double twist), the whole thing plays more like a made-for-TV movie than an actual film because none of the characters are more than one-dimensional despite the good acting. And the final scene between Butler and Bello is totally unbelievable as to motivation.

Summing up: Basically tricky and shallow at the core.

Butterfly on a Wheel (AKA: Shattered) is directed by Mike Barker and written by William Morrissey. It stars Pierce Brosnan, Maria Bello and Gerard Butler. Music is by Robert Duncan and cinematography by Ashley Rowe.

Butler and Bello play a seemingly happily married couple who have an adorable young daughter into the fold. Enter a rather sinister Brosnan who announces he has kidnapped the daughter and requires the couple to do everything he asks. Pressure is on then!?

Basically this is just real solid kidnap thriller film making, the kind that we were well served with back in the 1980s, and with that in mind this comes off like a throw back to that decade. Brosnan (how nice to see him doing a natural Irish brogue) grows ever more spiteful, while of course our handsome couple get more frantic.

But naturally there's a mystery going on here, we are left in no doubt about that there is something lurking beyond the edges of the frames. To which the inevitable twist, on which the whole pic's very being depends upon, will either make or break how you ultimately feel about the piece as a whole.

I liked it. 7/10

This movie is the equivalent of shattering an already broken mirror. We are introduced to the happy, functioning family: Father's successful and climbing the corporate ladder in the advertising industry, while mom stays at home and takes care of cute-as-a-cupcake daughter. All is well...

(if you are really intent on going through the dissatisfaction of watching this movie and are as thick as brick, you shouldn't read any further)

...But right from the start we see father weaseling his way to the top, egotistically snatching away his colleagues' well deserved moment to shine from under their noses. We see father exchange an all too obvious glance with his secretary. We see mom holding a camera and longingly looking at photos she once took. We can overhear a conversation between mom and dad's secretary that seems casual, but carries the promise of becoming significant later on in the movie all too obviously.

If the writer or director - I'm guessing these are directorial decisions - had done a better job at concealing the cracks in the foundation of the perfect family-life facade in the beginning, maybe the shattered dreams at the end would have packed a slightly bigger punch. But half way into the movie we give up on the chance of this becoming anything remotely worth wile. And we masochistically watch the plot unfolding in more and more implausible ways, as the characters (read: plot-devices) propel it to its breathtakingly uninteresting, and actually insulting ending. Ultimately the only thing this movie shatters, is the audience's hope of seeing an intelligent and entertaining movie.

Every now and then: the huge Hollywood-engine creates a small and simple film that turns out to be far superior than any gigantic blockbuster made that year. "Butterfly on a wheel" is such a film. It doesn't feature amazing explosions or overwhelming car chases or anything of that kind. It has marvelous actors playing colorful characters in a gripping storyline. These are only the very basic elements but this film uses them wisely. Unlike most thrillers however, this one doesn't take an awful lot of time to set the mood but moves at a high pace.

The split-second where this movie instantly changes from a soft-drama to a razor-sharp thriller is absolutely gorgeous ... it's a real shocker! And from that moment forth we have ourselves a nail-biting ride which'll keep you firmly on the edge of your seat until the very end. On top of that: this movie's great twist ending beautifully blurs the line between good and evil.

Pierce Brosnan has already proved to be much more than 007 and continues to do so here. Maria Bello became famous as the sexy waitress/dancer in "Coyote ugly" but over the years she became a fine actress. And Gerard Butler has fought side by side with Lara Croft and 300 of the bravest Greeks, but now this Scottish actor takes a break from this senseless violence and plays a more fragile role.

In short: "Butterfly on a wheel" is an intelligent cat-and-mouse-game that steadily becomes a first-rate thriller.