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Trapped

Trapped

List Price: $14.94
Your Price: $13.45
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Don't get Trapped
Review: I usually enjoy Kevin Bacon and Charlize Theron but 'Trapped' is how I felt watching this movie. On more than one occasion I was tempted to turn it off but to give it a fair shot I reluctantly sat through its entirety. Even with suspension of any serious expectations, the movie is at most, just minimally entertaining.

The character development is incomplete and in some cases lacking altogether which makes them all very bland. The characters are also very annoying. This is one movie where you almost cheer for the bad guys to do something horrible.

Kevin Bacon appears bored and uninvolved in his role and seems to indicate that the 'strange dude' typecast just isn't working for him anymore. He needs to move on. Charlize Theron gives a good performance but the horrible script weighs her down. A noble effort is also made by Courtney Love who also seems encumbered by the bad script.

Unfortunately, the ludicrous script only gets worse as the plot thickens to a consistency of green pea soup that has been sitting on the kitchen table for weeks. Get the idea? This movie stinks.

Although filled with some unbelievable (in the silliest sense) action, the 'finale' was laughable and predictable ... but mostly long awaited.

If you want to see Kevin Bacon as a more believable bad guy, I highly suggest 'The River Wild'.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Pretty suspenseful!
Review: I came across this movie on late-night cable and I didn't intend to continue watching it the whole way through, but it just had me riveted until the end. Yes, it's an average movie, but it's just plain movie fun. A good suspenseful flick when you have nothing else to do.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Excellent acting and emotion capturing
Review: Charlize Theron looks beautiful and plays the perfect role. Courtney Love is okay but maybe could've used more drama or seduciveness. Stuart Townsend has a nice accent and is dramatic. Kevin Bacon does a great job at being hated (can be hard to do, but he pulls it off well). Pruitt Vince did a very good job; not sure what else to say about him. :) Dakota Fanning is a wonderful actress (can cry and scream belivably) and is so lovable. Overall, great cast and a pretty good plot... although, as somebody else mentioned, the ending was a bit too dramatic and overloaded with special effects (looks as if 90% of the budget went toward the finale).

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Twenty-four hours of tension - 3.5 stars
Review: I am usually disappointed with the movie after reading the book, and that is why in several cases I do not even bother to go through the exercise of watching it. I read "24 Hours", the book by Greg Iles on which the movie is based, a couple of years ago and was satisfied with the experience. When the movie came out I did not even give it a second glance, but when Charlize Theron won the Oscar for best actress for her performance in "Monster", I decided that maybe I should give other of her performances a try.

The script, written by Iles, is faithful to the book. A team of kidnappers has found a "perfect" modus operandi; they grab a rich kid and at the same time one of the members of the team stays with the mother and another with the father to keep them in check. In this way everything runs smoothly...or maybe not. Now they have chosen the wrong family to mess with, since they will not go down without a fight.

Kevin Bacon plays Joe, the leader of the kidnappers' team, who is in charge of staying with the mother of the victim (Charlize Theron). The movie goes back and forth between this pair and the one formed by Stuart Townsend, who plays the role of the father, and Courtney Love, the female member of the gang. This separation makes the difference in the quality of the acting strikingly obvious, with Bacon and Theron shinning compared to Townsend and Love.

The movie, as the book, presents a thriller with a non-stop pace, which keeps the audience on edge. The sexual tension between the kidnappers and the victims present in the book is well achieved in the movie too. The main weakness of the movie is the ending, which is rushed compared to the novel. Therefore, it does not achieve such a high climax and disappoints those who read the book a little bit towards the end. To sum up, this is a good movie based on a very good book.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Traumatic transition from print to screen
Review: After reading "The quiet game" and "24 hours", Greg Iles' books became constant on my "List of books to buy". Iles, to me, is like the earlier John Grisham , the good Grisham, who could write thrillers like "A time to kill" and "The firm".

"Trapped" is a movie based on Iles' "24 hours". It deals with a group of kidnappers who have devised the "perfect kidnapping plan", as Joey, the head of the gang, puts it: by separating the father, the mother, and the child, and by placing phone calls every thirty minutes, the kidnappers have total control of the situation. But this time it's not going to be that easy.

The book is gripping, thrilling and very well written in the sense that all characters' reactions are true to real life. When I knew that there was a movie based on "24 hours", featuring the beautiful Charlize Theron, the competent Kevin Bacon and with a screenplay written by the same author, I wanted to watch it right away. Unfortunately, the result is not the one I expected.

"Trapped" is one of those examples where the transition from print to screen is kind of traumatic. While the text makes the reader turn the pages faster, the movie scenes are rushed and make the viewers role their eyes. While the plot on text is believable, the plot on screen lacks elements so that the viewer fully understands what's going on. While reading the book, I could picture anyone I wanted as Joey, but watching the movie I had to put up with Bacon's worst acting in years. Once again, Charlize Theron is competent, and Pruett Taylor Vince is another good surprise.

Even so, with all these problems, "Trapped" is mildly entertaining and fast-paced, even if somewhat predictable. Greg Iles is an above average author, but needs polishment as a screenplay writer.

Grade 6.5/10

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: What's wrong with this movie.
Review: Boring and I mean boring.The actors were fine but it is the story that stinks.Why didn't Stuart Townsend's and Charlize Theron's characters who had weapons each took out the bad guys and call the authorities immediately.And the helicopter chase scene didn't make any sense.Why didn't the FBI arrest Courtney Love's character earlier and when Kevin Bacon's character was hit in the face with a tire iron,how did he quickly recovered and was then shot to death.I saw so many flaws in the movie I could list them in a ten minute span.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Predictable Kidnapping Drama...
Review: The perfect kidnapping scheme is put into action by Joe Hickey (Kevin Bacon) for the fifth time as he and his companions kidnap Abby from the Jennings family. The plan consists of kidnapping Abby from the Jennings as Joe's brother, Marvin (Pruitt Taylor Vince), watches Abby for 24 hours. During this time Joe dictates to the mother what she should be doing to get the safe return of her daughter. While all of this is going on,, the father is self-contained as he is on a business trip. However, this time something goes wrong as Abby suffers from asthma. The cast performs well in this suspenseful action film, but it does not save the film as there is not much suspense in this predictable kidnapping drama. Trapped fails to convey a message as it jumps from scene to scene which ends up hurting the overall cinematic experience.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Wow
Review: Based upon a novel by Greg Iles, this movie absolutely Rocks!

Joe (Kevin Bacon) is a child kidnapper. He's done it before and he does it again. This time he choses Karen Jenning's family and in broad daylight he forces himself into her house and gets hold of Abigail, Karen's daughter.
But this time it is different. Abigail is asthmatic and she could die in kidnapper hands!

What'll happen next???
You better watch it yourself! :)

From the time Abigail gets kidnapped until the end of the movie you'll feel that you're sitting on thorns or you'll bite all your nails until "there's none".

Highly Recommended

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Starts Promisingly But ... Film Is Trapped in Contrivance
Review: Is there any perfect kidnapping plan? Greg Iles's bestselling thriller starts with this intiriguing (and very unnerving) premise. Our chief villain Joe Hickey (Kevin Bacon, again a bad guy, huh?) thinks so, and has succeeded four times so far, with his "team" including Pruitt Taylor Vince and Courtney Love.

But when Joe kidnapped lovely little girl Abby Jennings (incredibly talented Dakota Fanning, "I Am Sam"), he forgot to check one thing, which leads him and Abby's mother (Charlize Theron) into the complications. The would-be perfect crime (which effectively uses cell phones) spins out of control, and bring out more and more suspence.

The story about kidnapping always worries people because it has a ring of truth. What if that happens to my family? The film starts with such kind of intense moments, so it will make some of you certainly uncomfortable.

But soon you realize that the script (done by the original author himself) needs more polishing. I don't know anything about the book, but the film has too many coincidences and situations too good to be true, How many fathers in USA does happen to own an airplane? Or how many of them happen to have a friend in phone company? Somebody, guess it.

The actors are not to be blamed, considering the sometimes corny dialogues and unbelievable finale. Kevin Bacon, adding another film to his CV to make the game of 'six steps' easier than before, again throws away his shirt on bed (is this compulsory or something?). Charlize Theron is credible as tormented mother ... at least so before she does THAT to Kevin Bacon's character, and Stuwart Townsend is passable as her husband, but they all pale away before Dakota Fanning. Actually, in Japan, "Trapped" is advertized as the film starring Dakota Fanning. The fact is a little different, but certainly the film distributor's decision can be justified.

Better than the same director Luis Mandoki's "Angel Eyes," "Trapped" still appears meandering at some points. Ignore the plot holes and many contrived situations, and you might find it pretty thrilling ... at least, the opening 30 minutes.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Awesome!
Review: This suspense thriller is really great. It is better than most in its genre, a) because of the great performances by Charlize Theron, Kevin Bacon, Stuart Townsend, Dakota Fanning, and quite surprisingly, Courtney Love b) also, the predictability level isn't large. The story takes many plot twists! Anyone who enjoys a good suspenseful movie should definetely see "Trapped"!


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