**SPOILERS FOLLOW**
This movie had a chance with its premise, and sort of blew it within the first half hour. Bacon's grand scheme of pulling off unreported kidnappings is nearly foiled when Theron produces a revolver his research obviously missed. She holds it on him, and he says his being hurt will cause him to miss making the periodic phone call (that the victim's life supposedly depends on). This was Theron's cue to blow off one of his fingers or something (where's Quentin Tarantino when we need him?) and insist that he call and have the kid returned before she continues blowing off body parts. But NO! She gives up the gun only to torture us with another concealed weapon later, in a scene that no doubt had all male viewers clutching their scrotums.
Acting is fairly good: Bacon is convincingly despicable as the self-styled mastermind; Theron is reasonably good as the upset mom; Dakota Fanning is a precision technician as the kidnapped child. The guy who plays Marvin has some difficulty conveying whether he is supposed to be Lenny from "Of Mice and Men", or Albert DeSalvo from "The Boston Strangler".
Poor Stuart Townsend looks like the youngest doctor since Doogie Howser (but Doogie hadn't had time to amass a fortune through drug research AND get his pilot's license).
Courtney Love plays her role with all the aplomb of an off duty counter girl from Macy's thrust into a film role. Fortunately, Townsend has just the right drug in his black bag (research docs still carry black med bags with them?) to neutralize her with paralysis, which Love manages fairly well.
The movie could still have worked if not for the gun scene mentioned above, the annoying obsession of Bacon's character to sex each victim's mom, and the extraneous connection in the past of the kidnappers and these particular victims.
Six stars out of ten!
This movie had a chance with its premise, and sort of blew it within the first half hour. Bacon's grand scheme of pulling off unreported kidnappings is nearly foiled when Theron produces a revolver his research obviously missed. She holds it on him, and he says his being hurt will cause him to miss making the periodic phone call (that the victim's life supposedly depends on). This was Theron's cue to blow off one of his fingers or something (where's Quentin Tarantino when we need him?) and insist that he call and have the kid returned before she continues blowing off body parts. But NO! She gives up the gun only to torture us with another concealed weapon later, in a scene that no doubt had all male viewers clutching their scrotums.
Acting is fairly good: Bacon is convincingly despicable as the self-styled mastermind; Theron is reasonably good as the upset mom; Dakota Fanning is a precision technician as the kidnapped child. The guy who plays Marvin has some difficulty conveying whether he is supposed to be Lenny from "Of Mice and Men", or Albert DeSalvo from "The Boston Strangler".
Poor Stuart Townsend looks like the youngest doctor since Doogie Howser (but Doogie hadn't had time to amass a fortune through drug research AND get his pilot's license).
Courtney Love plays her role with all the aplomb of an off duty counter girl from Macy's thrust into a film role. Fortunately, Townsend has just the right drug in his black bag (research docs still carry black med bags with them?) to neutralize her with paralysis, which Love manages fairly well.
The movie could still have worked if not for the gun scene mentioned above, the annoying obsession of Bacon's character to sex each victim's mom, and the extraneous connection in the past of the kidnappers and these particular victims.
Six stars out of ten!