FRIDAY NIGHT MOVIE REVIEW: “The Captive” stars Ryan Reynolds (R.I.P.D., Green Lantern), Kevin Durand (Wild Hogs, Lost), Alexia Fast (Jack Reacher, Fido), Mireille Enos (World War Z, The Killing), Rosario Dawson (Zookeeper, Sin City), Bruce Greenwood (Star Trek [2009], I, Robot), and Scott Speedman (Underworld, Felicity). Matthew (Reynolds) is a landscaper that has a wife, Tina (Enos), and a nine-year-old daughter, Cassandra (Fast). In good spirit of Cassandra’s skating, Matthew takes her to a diner to get a pie, like they usually do every weekend. When he gets out of the truck to go inside, he leaves her inside for just a minute. When he leaves the diner and heads back to the car, he sees that she is gone with no trace as to who could’ve taken her. Broken up over it, Matthew can’t let go of the fact that she is gone, keeping his truck filled with her things like she hasn’t left the car. Police tried looking for her, but couldn’t and after eight long years she is still missing. But, one day, a detective by the name of Jeffrey (Speedman), finds a picture of Cassandra over the internet while looking into the case and sees that she is still alive. Now it is all a matter of finding out where she is and who is keeping her captive.

I had semi-high hopes for this movie. The plot seemed promising and the actor profiles were impressive, seeing how I like the people who act in it. Of course, the reviews were bad, but I’ve found that quite a bit of movies are good even though the consensus says otherwise. When it comes to this movie, that is not the case. The reviews were right. The plot of this movie was mediocre to say the least. The first ten minutes were a nightmare (and not like the story began with a nightmare). They open to a long shot of just looking at a random lot filled with snow while the opening credits roll. The setting had nothing to do with what was in the next scene. When it finally got to some dialogue, I thought it would be a long night. It focuses on dialogue for pretty much all of the movie and it didn’t work most of the time. It was made up of long, dull conversations and in the beginning, the acting seemed stale. Ryan Reynolds was the only person that held up his role, and he did a good job. That’s just the beginning. I will say that the movie did pick up as it went along. It got more interesting and I actually wanted to finish it once it got towards the middle. The acting got better and the characters developed a little more. But it still didn’t make up for the whole movie because it didn’t seem to exceed past mediocre. I think that all of it has to go to the flow of the movie. This movie relies heavily on timeline, jumping between past and present. Sure, that’s a fine concept, but what really makes it annoying is that I can’t tell when it is in the past or the present! I sit there for a lot of the movie basically watching a bunch of clips stringed together from different timelines, not knowing when it is happening until the scene gets close to ending. It becomes confusing. There are times when I am able to understand though when the movie is happening as it gets deeper into the film, but overall, it isn’t the best. I think the reason why is because of how they don’t warn the viewer when they jump in time. For example, on “Lost” they have flashbacks (and flash forwards and flash sideways). When they go from the present timeline to the past, they always make a sound effect that sounds like the rumbling of a plane taking off, letting the viewer know that they are going to see a flashback next. This movie doesn’t do that. They just cut to a flashback. There are other ways to do this, like different filters or different transitions, but no. This movie just cuts to the scene. The only pros to this film that I can find, like I stated before, are that it does get interesting towards the middle and the end and the acting gets better. There are only a handful of good scenes. One of them, which is my favorite (and it a really good scene in general), is when Matthew finds the people who took his daughter sitting in a diner and goes to talk to them, making it thrilling and leading to a small car chase which is cool. I wish this movie had more thrilling moments like that instead of just boring dialogue and random outbursts from actors (there were random reactions in this movie as well. One being Matthew’s wife going ballistic on him and punching him). Overall, this movie is around the middle of 0% and 100%. It had its ups and downs, but downs prevailed. I would not recommend this movie. FINAL SCORE: 52%= Burnt Popcorn

Here is the trailer: