Directed by:
Atom EgoyanScreenplay:
Atom EgoyanCinematography:
Paul SarossyComposer:
Mychael DannaCast:
Ryan Reynolds, Scott Speedman, Rosario Dawson, Mireille Enos, Kevin Durand, Alexia Fast, Bruce Greenwood, Peyton Kennedy, Aaron Poole, William MacDonald (more)VOD (1)
Plots(1)
Doting husband and father, Matthew (Ryan Reynolds), leaves his daughter in his truck while he ducks into a roadside diner. When he returns, she is gone and his world is instantly destroyed. Struggling under the weight of loss, suspicion and guilt, his marriage breaks down. Through all of the heartbreak and turmoil he never loses hope that he’ll find his missing child. Eight years later, with the help of local police, a girl who matches his daughter’s description is sighted on the internet. With his daughter found to be held captive, but her actual whereabouts unknown, Matthew is in a race against time to save her. (Icon Home Entertainment)
(more)Reviews (2)
At the moment of the off-screen abduction, Egoyan used the exact same shot that Villeneuve had used in Prisoners a year earlier. Otherwise, however, he goes in a different direction, showing us the villains and the background with the kidnapped victim right from the start while continuously introducing the main characters. Mixing up the chronology of certain events makes watching the film interesting. Everything starts to become clear to you after a few dozen minutes. Then there are some impressively chilling scenes and decently portrayed bad guys that give you goosebumps. The Captive is a decent, not entirely typical contribution to the category of similar genre films.
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Here we can compare the work of Atom Egoyan and Denis Villeneuve. An underdeveloped screenplay that, while offering plenty of interesting scenes and passages of dialogue, oddly jumps around in the timelines and doesn't allow the viewer to improvise and make assumptions, or even to leaf through the exuberant content, as it's opaque. And, unfortunately, it is also not half as atmospheric (lacking camera work, music, lighting) as Prisoners, an element that accounted for 50 percent of the success that film last year. All in all, Captive is a class below, but still decent filmmaking. The most enjoyable is again the expressive Ryan Reynolds, who just knows how to put himself in these roles.
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