Film

Trapped (2002)

Director: Luis Mandoki

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

With a less distinguished cast, this moppet in peril kidnapping movie could easily have crawled straight on to the bottom shelf of your video library. Instead, Hollywood studio production values and slumming stars are wasted on a sleazeoid thriller which might be pretty vile if it weren't quite so unintentionally amusing. The set-up: white trash crims Bacon (scheming ringleader), Love (abused spouse) and Vince (twitchy accomplice) target golden couple Townsend and Theron, hotshot medical researcher and textile designer respectively, for their latest scam. They'll abduct their victims' daughter, hold the child for 24 hours, then collect on the ransom money. The catch? The crooks are unaware of the girl's life threatening asthma and need for medication. Shamelessly exploitative, this flits between lurid and dumb as dirt. Bacon tries to put a performance in regardless when he corners Theron alone in her designer home, but his snake-like persuasion is on a hiding to nothing when director Mandoki flagrantly ignores both taste and credibility.

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