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  Directed by
  Starring
  Specs
  • Widescreen 1.85:1
  • 16:9 Enhanced
  • Dual Layer (RSDL 74.05)
  Languages
  • English: Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
  Subtitles
    English, English - Hearing Impaired
  Extras
  • 5 Deleted scenes
  • Theatrical trailer
  • 2 Audio commentary - Director, writer
  • Featurette - 20 min
  • Filmographies
  • Dolby Digital trailer - "Canyon"
  • Alternate ending
Trapped (2002) (Rental)
Columbia Pictures/Roadshow Entertainment . R4 . COLOR . 101 mins . M15+ . PAL

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If your first impression when confronted with a movie called Trapped is that it sounds like a generic television movie of the week, then you’re not alone. Originally titled 24 Hours until late in production, by the time it ended up in cinemas the film was sporting a hopelessly generic name (there had been 18 previous movies and telemovies called Trapped before it!) While the reason for the name change is widely believed to have been because of the success of TV series 24, writer Greg Iles states categorically in his DVD commentary that this was not the case. But the new title isn’t just generic - it also makes little sense in the context of the finished film. At various times people are trapped both physically and morally, sure, but usually not for very long.

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Charlize's agent leaves some advice on the window.

Karen Jennings (Charlize Theron) is the doting mother of young asthmatic girl Abby (Dakota Fanning), raising her daughter while her rich doctor husband Will (Stuart Townsend, fresh out of Queen of the Damned) flies off to conferences and practices looking incredibly serious at people. While Will’s off on one such junket, Abby is kidnapped by home invader Joe Hickey (Kevin Bacon) and his partner, a mentally challenged man named Marvin (Pruitt Taylor Vince). Joe tells Karen that she is to follow his instructions to the letter, eventually handing over $250,000 and getting her daughter back in exactly 24 hours; he’s done this several times before, and the plan’s always worked flawlessly. But Karen (and her husband, who’s being pointlessly held hostage by third partner in crime Courtney Love) isn’t about to give in without a fight against the odds…

Another variation on the Standard Kidnap Thriller, Trapped takes the seeds of a good idea and ends up throwing them away for the sake of being a genre picture. The 24-hour concept is made a key point right at the start of the film (in an opening sequence that defuses much of the potential menace of the intruders) but is soon thrown away, never to be mentioned again. Instead the audience is treated to the same-old-same-old scenario - the quiet middle-class woman who finds strength and fights against the odds to save her daughter from the baddies at any cost. Right from the first two minutes we know the kidnappers don’t want to kill their victim, no matter how much the filmmakers want us to think to the contrary. So there are few surprises - and those that are offered happen in a final act that redefines the words “aww, c’mon!

There is goodness here, but most of it’s in the technical department. Brilliant cinematographer Piotr Sobocinski (who shot Three Colours: Red) died a week into production, having shot the opening scenes with Theron’s character. His work’s stylised enough to survive in spirit for the rest of the movie, which ended up being lensed by another camera legend, Frederick Elmes (think Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart and River’s Edge) very much in the style Sobocinski had established.

Director Luis Mandoki usually opts for more tepid subject matter (Message in a Bottle, Angel Eyes, White Palace) and seems more interested in character detail than the plot; unfortunately writer Iles (who ended up penning a novel from this screenplay) can’t quite ratchet up the tension all on his own. The end result is, despite solid performances from Bacon and Theron, a predictable thriller with solid production values, but very little real spark.

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  Audio
  Extras
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"Your Bacon number is about to be ZERO!!!"
An independent production that ended up getting cash and distribution from Columbia, this 1.85:1, 16:9-enhanced transfer of Trapped arrives on DVD in Australia via Roadshow in one of those weirdo licensing deals that nobody understands. Hence the transfer here bears the Columbia logo at start and end, despite being on a Roadshow disc. Once you get used to that idea, the next thing you notice is the decidedly washed-out appearance of the picture, from Columbia logo onwards. Going by comments in the commentary tracks, this seems to have been intentional - but the colour manipulation goes just a little too far at times, as though it’s trying to imitate the now-overused “bleach bypass” processing trick to get a “gritty” look. Detail is good, blacks and shadows are all as they should be, but the washed-out colour doesn’t seem quite right. There’s also a surprising amount of visible film glitches, mostly dust and scratches in brief sequences. No problems arise from MPEG compression, though, and the layer change is well-placed and smooth.

Audio, in Dolby Digital 5.1, is good but not great. Dialogue sometimes sounds muffled, but is otherwise okay; the surround stage is used for various directional effects but otherwise it’s a very front-focused soundtrack. The music score, by John Ottman, is enthusiastically prominent.

Rental disc this may be, but it’s also the version that will (presumably) go on retail sale (hence the wording “rental window” on our promo disc) and contains all the extras seen on Columbia’s US version. There’s a pair of audio commentaries, the first with a serious and reserved director Mandoki and the second with an obviously enthusiastic writer Iles. It’s the second commentary that’s the best listen, mainly because this was Iles’ first experience with a movie and, as a result, he’s taken note of some genuinely interesting things that the more jaded would ignore. The 20-minute featurette, Trapped from Within, does the EPK-style thing, but manages to be a bit more interesting than usual, largely because of its inclusion of plentiful interview and behind-the-scenes footage, as well as production stills. Five deleted scenes from raw editing output are long enough to be of value even when it’s obvious why they should have been cut, while a rough-cut alternate ending shows just how cheesy the end of the picture could have been if they’d taken this route. The theatrical trailer tries hard to sell the film (it failed - Trapped bombed at the box office); it’s in 16:9 widescreen with 5.1 audio, and note that colour is balanced substantially differently here. And last of all, some filmographies of cast and crew are provided.

It’s a decent extras package for a movie that probably wouldn’t have gotten such lavish treatment had they known how badly it would flop at the time of preparing this disc…!


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  •   And I quote...
    "A predictable thriller with solid production values but very little real spark."
    - Anthony Horan
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