The issue of child abduction is hardly one to be made light
of, yet Luis Prieto’s Kidnap uses the subject as a catalyst for a Death
Wish-like vehicle for actress Halle Berry.
Stupid to an insulting degree with plot holes and lapses in logic that
defy all reason, the film shamelessly exploits this subject, a parent’s worst
nightmare and a tragedy that befalls over 50,000 families each year in the
United States, for the sole purpose of providing a cheap, vicarious
entertainment consisting of series of poorly shot action scenes and car chase
sequences.
Berry is Karla Dyson, the world’s most beautiful greasy
spoon waitress trying to raise her irritatingly cute six year-old son Frankie
(Sage Correa) on her own. One day the
pair pays a visit to the zoo and while there, mom takes an important phone call
and wanders away from her son, only to come back to find him missing. Frantically searching for him, Karla has the
good fortune of catching a glimpse of him being forced into a car and gives
chase.
The rest of the film is one long pursuit towards narrative,
as well as logical, dead ends. Much of
Karla’s illogical actions early on can be excused by the character’s expected
sense of panic over the situation. However, once things calm down, many
opportunities present themselves in which the abductors could be stopped but
aren’t. You’re likely to find yourself
yelling at the screen, “Run them off the road!”
or “Lead the cops to them!” or other sage pieces of advice. As written by Knate Lee, this is the sort of
film that requires that most of the characters act like idiots throughout or
there simply wouldn’t have a feature-length story to tell. Nope, this movie would have a running time of
about 25 minutes if any of the characters had a half a brain in their heads
but, of course, that length wouldn’t qualify it for theatrical release.
Kidnap is the sort of film that plays the audience for
fools, depending on the viewer to accept everything they’re shown at face
value, all the while hoping their emotional investment in the characters will
cloud their better judgment so that they never question the logic of what
they’re seeing, That the audience I saw the film with was quietly tittering at
some of the movie’s more ridiculous moments gave me some hope. Today’s viewers are a savvy bunch, far too
savvy to take a piece of trash like Kidnap as a serious expose or dramatic
entertainment.
This article appears in Aug 3-9, 2017.
