Mauvais piège

Love the beginning. The premise of the movie is set up beautifully, tightly, but a garbled ending with too many plot lines begun in the last third of the movie dooms the project. It dissipates interest when a director arbitrarily introduces motives that had not been foreshadowed. Competent actors in what is eventually a lifeless vehicle, despite the chase, collisions, smoke and noise.

This is the kind of story we have seen too many times.Even the "new" element -the victim needs medicines- has already been used.In "Verdict" (André Cayatte,1974),for instance, Sophia Loren abducted a judge's wife who was a diabetic .I felt sorry for Kevin Bacon ,a great great actor who is not always given the parts he deserves -as for instance in "mystic river"- All is finally too predictable and the film is handicapped by poor acting by Courtney Love (whose part is uninteresting anyway,it resembles those of Claire Trevor in films noirs).The best sequence remains for me the one when Bacon and Theron pretend they are lovers,the only really suspenseful moment.The doctor character is completely incredible:this frail young man suddenly doing aerobatics is too much !

Average. The movie is full of clichés and most of all, the ending is totally unrealistic and overblown.

Otherwise, if they had stuck to the basic plot, this could have been a nice little thriller, especially because on average, the acting was pretty good (especially Charlize Theron and Kevin Bacon). As usual, for some reason Hollywood producers (or Directors) feel it necessary to cram movies with tons of unnecessary subplots most of the time, as well as add minutes of ridiculous 'action scenes' which usually make the films look unreal and unbelievable to the audience. Do they really think the average moviegoer is a moron? In this case, the ending definitely ruined what could have been a good thriller...

The storyline of "Trapped" is broken down into three parts, which are set in three different locations (the house, the cabin in the woods, the hotel room). The first two work better, thanks to the smashing performances of Kevin Bacon and the perpetually underrated Charlize Theron, and the outstanding one by Pruitt Taylor Vince (I'm talking about the kind of performance that, in a higher-profile film, would surely have gotten him an Academy Award nomination). The third part is not as good, because Courtney Love is rather poor in her role and Stuart Townsend is too young and too bland for his. The film never succeeds at being anything more than a formulaic kidnapping thriller, but the director, Luis Mandoki, knows how to handle the formula and which buttons to push to keep it reasonably taut....until the overblown climax. (**1/2)

"Trapped", the top-of-the-heap video release for this week, tells of a a well to do couple whose daughter is kidnapped by a man who wants more than just money. What begins as a stylish thriller with good psychodramatic potential abandons the mind games at the half way point, trades nuances for sledge hammer blows, and disintegrates in a ball of Hollywoodish convoluted anything-for-the-thrill fire. Nonetheless, "Trapped" is probably worth a look for those who aren't too analytical and just want some no brainer excesses. (B-)