24 Stunden Angst (2002)

24 Stunden Angst: Directed by Luis Mandoki. With Charlize Theron, Courtney Love, Stuart Townsend, Kevin Bacon. The Jennings’ fight for their daughters life after she is kidnapped by an experienced gang of thieves.

“Rating: *** out of ****u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eOne of the more pleasant surprises of the year, Trapped stars Kevin Bacon as a clever kidnapper who gets more than he bargained for when he and his partners (Courtney Love and Pruit Taylor Vance) hold a rich coupleu0026#39;s (Charlize Theron and Stuart Townsend) daughter for ransom. Director Luis Mandoki knows how to pile on the tension to this chilling premise, delivering genuine suspense and thrills every minute without losing momentum. The story even holds a few decent surprises that caught me slightly off-guard, if not necessarily shocked.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eAs well-tuned as the direction was, what impressed me the most were the performances. The central story focuses on Theron and Bacon, and both make for one of the more effective protagonist/antagonist duos in recent memory. Dakota Fanning also shines as the kidnapped daughter; this is one of the best performances from a child actor all year (the other is from Fanning herself in the miniseries Taken). Stuart Townsend and Courtney Love arenu0026#39;t as effective as Theron and Bacon, but come through with solid performances.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eTrapped is still a very flawed movie, considering the script is hardly original and the subject matter itself is a little unsavory and disturbing. The tit-for-tat matches between kidnapper and hostage can get a little repetitive, but the fact that it revolves around three pairings does add more tension to the proceedings. Still, the movie nicely builds to its thrilling conclusion, a climactic sequence that is a bit overdone but nonetheless exciting. Itu0026#39;s a pity Trapped was ignored at the box office, since itu0026#39;s easily far superior to recent similarly plotted kidnapped thrillers such as Donu0026#39;t Say a Word or Along Came a Spider.”