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THE CAPTIVE, CANNES FILM FESTIVAL - FILM REVIEW
The Evening Standard, UK
May 16 2014
This intriguing film from Atom Egoyan is a truly nasty-minded thriller
about a paedophile ring
Cannes has its favourites. The Captive is the sixth film by
Armenian-Canadian director Atom Egoyan (Exotica, The Sweet Hereafter,
Felicia's Journey) to have been accepted into competition for the
Palme d'Or, although his reputation doesn't stand so high elsewhere.
Set in snowy Niagara, it's a truly nasty-minded police procedural
thriller about a paedophile ring and initially intrigues because it
discloses its narrative quite deviously, switching back and forth in
time so that the sequence of events takes a while to emerge.
Cute nine-year-old Cass is kidnapped when her father Matt (Ryan
Reynolds) leaves her briefly unattended in a car outside a diner. A
gifted detective specialising in paedophilia, Nicole (Rosario Dawson,
so lush in her looks, so humdrum as an actress), and her hard-charging
sidekick Jeff (Scott Speedman) investigate, initially suspecting Matt.
The case is unsolved.
Eight years later, mysterious clues that Cass (played by 21-year-old
Alexia Fast) may still be alive start appearing in the hotel rooms
where Cass's mother Tina (Mireille Enos), now separated from the
girl's father, works as a maid.
For not only has Cass been the captive of a paedophile ring for all
these years, now that she has outgrown their interest herself she is
collaborating with them -- helping to lure new child victims online.
Her captor, an opera-loving pervert with a very haughty manner
(Kevin Durand), is also a techno-wizard and he has surveillance
cameras everywhere for secretly savouring her mother's agony. Now
he's targeting Nicole for getting on his case.
So what we have here is "a whole new class of freaks" as one of the
cops exclaims, impressed.
As this paedophile-paranoia exploitation pic unravels, its elaborate
set-up grows more and more preposterous, the villain especially
laughable, unfortunately. To have made such a thriller out of this
material is tasteless, if not in actively bad taste.
The Cannes Film Festival runs until Sun May 25, festival-cannes.com
http://www.standard.co.uk/goingout/film/the-captive-cannes-film-festival--film-review-9382085.html
The Evening Standard, UK
May 16 2014
This intriguing film from Atom Egoyan is a truly nasty-minded thriller
about a paedophile ring
Cannes has its favourites. The Captive is the sixth film by
Armenian-Canadian director Atom Egoyan (Exotica, The Sweet Hereafter,
Felicia's Journey) to have been accepted into competition for the
Palme d'Or, although his reputation doesn't stand so high elsewhere.
Set in snowy Niagara, it's a truly nasty-minded police procedural
thriller about a paedophile ring and initially intrigues because it
discloses its narrative quite deviously, switching back and forth in
time so that the sequence of events takes a while to emerge.
Cute nine-year-old Cass is kidnapped when her father Matt (Ryan
Reynolds) leaves her briefly unattended in a car outside a diner. A
gifted detective specialising in paedophilia, Nicole (Rosario Dawson,
so lush in her looks, so humdrum as an actress), and her hard-charging
sidekick Jeff (Scott Speedman) investigate, initially suspecting Matt.
The case is unsolved.
Eight years later, mysterious clues that Cass (played by 21-year-old
Alexia Fast) may still be alive start appearing in the hotel rooms
where Cass's mother Tina (Mireille Enos), now separated from the
girl's father, works as a maid.
For not only has Cass been the captive of a paedophile ring for all
these years, now that she has outgrown their interest herself she is
collaborating with them -- helping to lure new child victims online.
Her captor, an opera-loving pervert with a very haughty manner
(Kevin Durand), is also a techno-wizard and he has surveillance
cameras everywhere for secretly savouring her mother's agony. Now
he's targeting Nicole for getting on his case.
So what we have here is "a whole new class of freaks" as one of the
cops exclaims, impressed.
As this paedophile-paranoia exploitation pic unravels, its elaborate
set-up grows more and more preposterous, the villain especially
laughable, unfortunately. To have made such a thriller out of this
material is tasteless, if not in actively bad taste.
The Cannes Film Festival runs until Sun May 25, festival-cannes.com
http://www.standard.co.uk/goingout/film/the-captive-cannes-film-festival--film-review-9382085.html