Also caught the new Halle Berry suspense film Kidnap. That’s an apt title – the movie is basically about a kidnapping and absolutely nothing else. Truth in advertising. This is not a criticism – the movie knows it’s a B grade pulpy suspense car chase film.
I didn’t know anything about the movie going in other than Halle Berry is in it and she was The Call, another movie about a kidnapping that I liked. So I gave it a shot without checking out the trailer. And the movie is rough, especially the first act. But as the tension and desperation ramps up and I realized it was basically one long car chase with no pretensions of being anything else, I got into it.
There’s some seriously bad editing in the frantic/desperation scenes and the few action beats… and the script makes Halle Berry have to narrate stuff we, the audience, can figure out on our own. And Berry really doesn’t always do a good job of having to recite this trite dialog either. So the film is far from perfect even when it does start to get better… but I thought what it did right ultimately outweighed the clunky setup and attempts at action.
To give a barebones synopsis, Halle Berry’s son gets kidnapped and she sees the car he’s been hustled into. With a dead phone and no way to contact the cops, she gives chase across just about every elevated swamp highway in New Orleans. On and off ramps, onto side roads, off onto the shoulders she chases the scumbag abductors all over, hoping to get the attention of the cops without losing sight of the car. Pretty much the entire movie is this chase.
And, like I said, it really starts to work. I give this a passing recommendation if you want a simple but mostly effective straight-forward suspense film.
Score: 79