I sometimes wonder if the actors who agree to appear in movies featuring Kevin Bacon do so because they have a secret desire to become a primary link in that ever-popular parlor game known as Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, a move destined to assure them of at least some chance at screenland immortality. The actors co-starring with him in `Trapped' - an aptly named film that is little more than a 99-minute wallow in pointless, unadulterated sadism - include Charlize Theron, Courtney Love and Stuart Townsend, not exactly no-name nobodies but not quite Hollywood A-list players either. But selling your soul for eternal fame often comes with a hefty price tag, and I have the rather sneaking suspicion that these latter-day Mephistopheles' would be just as happy if we forgot that they were ever associated with this perfectly dreadful, would-be thriller - Kevin Bacon and all. Even a chance at cinematic immortality can't be worth appearing in a movie this awful.
Is there a more sensitive subject these days than child endangerment and kidnapping? And can any filmmaker, daring or foolish enough to take it on, really do so without calling into question his own personal aims and motives? Do we really want to see traumatized children torn away from their parents or threatened with strangulation all in the guise of `popular entertainment'? It has been done successfully in the past, of course. One of the greatest thrillers of all time - the 1964 British film `Séance on a Wet Afternoon' - used the subject of child abduction as the source for its drama, but that film was a work of art, a poignant, psychologically compelling study of a woman on the verge of insanity. It takes a fine sensibility and a steady hand to keep a touchy issue like child endangerment from turning into an exercise in cheap exploitation, and, I'm sorry to say, neither of these qualities appears with much abundance in `Trapped,' the latest variation on the theme. Indeed, `Trapped' is about as far from being a work of art as it is possible for a film to get.
Bacon plays the leader of a trio of child kidnappers whose modus operandi is to target wealthy couples, hold their children for ransom, then release them when the parents have coughed up the demanded sums of money. The threesome claims to have `successfully' pulled off this little trick four times already - in each case ending with the parents being reunited with their children, no questions asked. The fifth and current abduction involves little Abby Jennings, the young daughter of Will and Karen Jennings, he a high-priced, seemingly world-renowned anesthesiologist, and she a doting mother with a few self-defense tricks up her sleeve (or in her panties to be more exact). And as if being forced to watch this poor little girl being threatened by a bunch of third-rate bullies weren't bad enough, we also have to witness her gasping for breath in any number of asthma attacks brought on by the stress of the experience. Well, what with `Signs' earlier and now this film, I guess asthma has become the childhood ailment of choice this movie season.
All throughout the film we keep being told how brilliant these kidnappers are supposed to be - yet they seem to do everything in their power to afford their victims ample opportunity to turn the tables on them. One, Bacon's wife, conveniently falls asleep so that the good doctor can casually remove all the bullets from her gun; another, Bacon's dull-witted, oafish cousin, a-kidnapper-with-a-heart-of-gold, goes into the kitchen to warm up some soup so that the unrestrained little girl can walk out the front door, cell phone in hand, to look for help; even Bacon, the `brains' of the outfit, allows Mrs. Jennings to go unaccompanied into the bathroom where she proceeds to rummage through the medicine cabinet for what seems like ten minutes until she finds a scalpel which she then proceeds to hold to his private parts after he has made himself thoroughly vulnerable by completely disrobing in anticipation of getting a little nooky on the side. One wonders how these world-class bumblers ever managed to pull off even one successful kidnapping, let alone four. The film even includes that oldest of all kidnap-scenario clichés - the obligatory nosey neighbor who drops by at the most inopportune moment and has to be fobbed off by the desperate victim without arousing suspicion. And, of course, we must have Ms. Theron strip down to her undies (and Mr. Bacon strip down to his birthday suit) just to up the sleaze quotient a bit.
The film is not only ugly on a moral level, but on a visual level as well. The cinematography by Frederick Elmes and Piotr Sobocinski is drab, mundane and colorless, and director Luis Mandoki's `style' consists mainly of having the camera jump up and down wildly whenever a character gets excited or the story threatens to undermine the audience's attention span. The finale involves a massive multi-vehicle pile up on an Oregon freeway that is as ludicrous as it is unconvincing.
`Trapped' pretty much says it all - for the actors, the filmmakers and, above all, the audience.
Is there a more sensitive subject these days than child endangerment and kidnapping? And can any filmmaker, daring or foolish enough to take it on, really do so without calling into question his own personal aims and motives? Do we really want to see traumatized children torn away from their parents or threatened with strangulation all in the guise of `popular entertainment'? It has been done successfully in the past, of course. One of the greatest thrillers of all time - the 1964 British film `Séance on a Wet Afternoon' - used the subject of child abduction as the source for its drama, but that film was a work of art, a poignant, psychologically compelling study of a woman on the verge of insanity. It takes a fine sensibility and a steady hand to keep a touchy issue like child endangerment from turning into an exercise in cheap exploitation, and, I'm sorry to say, neither of these qualities appears with much abundance in `Trapped,' the latest variation on the theme. Indeed, `Trapped' is about as far from being a work of art as it is possible for a film to get.
Bacon plays the leader of a trio of child kidnappers whose modus operandi is to target wealthy couples, hold their children for ransom, then release them when the parents have coughed up the demanded sums of money. The threesome claims to have `successfully' pulled off this little trick four times already - in each case ending with the parents being reunited with their children, no questions asked. The fifth and current abduction involves little Abby Jennings, the young daughter of Will and Karen Jennings, he a high-priced, seemingly world-renowned anesthesiologist, and she a doting mother with a few self-defense tricks up her sleeve (or in her panties to be more exact). And as if being forced to watch this poor little girl being threatened by a bunch of third-rate bullies weren't bad enough, we also have to witness her gasping for breath in any number of asthma attacks brought on by the stress of the experience. Well, what with `Signs' earlier and now this film, I guess asthma has become the childhood ailment of choice this movie season.
All throughout the film we keep being told how brilliant these kidnappers are supposed to be - yet they seem to do everything in their power to afford their victims ample opportunity to turn the tables on them. One, Bacon's wife, conveniently falls asleep so that the good doctor can casually remove all the bullets from her gun; another, Bacon's dull-witted, oafish cousin, a-kidnapper-with-a-heart-of-gold, goes into the kitchen to warm up some soup so that the unrestrained little girl can walk out the front door, cell phone in hand, to look for help; even Bacon, the `brains' of the outfit, allows Mrs. Jennings to go unaccompanied into the bathroom where she proceeds to rummage through the medicine cabinet for what seems like ten minutes until she finds a scalpel which she then proceeds to hold to his private parts after he has made himself thoroughly vulnerable by completely disrobing in anticipation of getting a little nooky on the side. One wonders how these world-class bumblers ever managed to pull off even one successful kidnapping, let alone four. The film even includes that oldest of all kidnap-scenario clichés - the obligatory nosey neighbor who drops by at the most inopportune moment and has to be fobbed off by the desperate victim without arousing suspicion. And, of course, we must have Ms. Theron strip down to her undies (and Mr. Bacon strip down to his birthday suit) just to up the sleaze quotient a bit.
The film is not only ugly on a moral level, but on a visual level as well. The cinematography by Frederick Elmes and Piotr Sobocinski is drab, mundane and colorless, and director Luis Mandoki's `style' consists mainly of having the camera jump up and down wildly whenever a character gets excited or the story threatens to undermine the audience's attention span. The finale involves a massive multi-vehicle pile up on an Oregon freeway that is as ludicrous as it is unconvincing.
`Trapped' pretty much says it all - for the actors, the filmmakers and, above all, the audience.