The Captive
Starring Ryan Reynolds, Rosario Dawson
Directed by Atom Egoyan
Ten years ago, Canadian director Atom Egoyan was crafting, with seemingly effortless brilliance, powerful films that probed the intricate depths of human emotions and the complexity of relationships. This makes the question about his latest endeavour all the more perplexing – what went wrong?
The Captive takes an already preposterous psychological thriller and reduces it to a cliché-riddled jumble of messy narratives.
The story shifts, at times confusingly, between several years as two Ontario parents (Ryan Reynolds and The Killing’s Mireille Enos) deal with the aftermath of their daughter’s abduction.
Any sort of tension is quickly dissolved as we are introduced to the missing girl early on in the movie. She is being confined in the basement suite of a luxury house by a creepy Kevin Durand, who displays some of the worst overacting in his otherwise stellar career. Soon enough, things get even murkier as two detectives (Rosario Dawson and Scott Speedman) are tasked with solving the mystery. These scenes are particularly awkward, playing out like an episode of a silly Canadian made-for-TV investigative crime drama.
The Captive’s crisp cinematography from Paul Sarossy is beautifully captured but feels cold and detached, as if to bluntly reinforce the message of alienation.
Credit should be given to some of the cast with Reynolds venturing out of his comedic comfort zone and Enos effectively portraying the grief she is facing. Sadly, the pedestrian script and thinly constructed supporting characters can’t rescue the rest of the film from drowning in a sea of melodrama.
