*** - Starting off a movie with about ten minutes of showing two guys silently preparing to kidnap someone by creating a soundproof room, stocking up on supplies, loading weapons and packing gear into a van isn’t exactly the best way to gain an audience’s attention. However, dull (although useful and informative for those who are in the initial stages of their own kidnapping plot) as that beginning is, the rest of this 2009 British film is actually pretty entertaining. It’s not terribly original in story – the premise being that a pair of kidnappers abscond with and attempt to ransom a rich bloke’s daughter – but it does toss in a few unexpected curveballs to keep things pretty interesting. The part of the lead kidnapper (played by the weasel-faced fellow who was Inspector Lestrade in Guy Ritchie’s “Sherlock Holmes”) was very well acted, and his second-in-command was ably portrayed as a sort of submissive wormy guy by someone who looked vaguely familiar but I can’t place. The only subpar performance was by the broad who played the kidnappee (who I believe was a Bond girl in one of the more recent Daniel Craig starring films) as she didn’t seem to be all that convincing when she was supposed to be scared, and she sobbed and whined a little too much. It’s not a bad film overall, though, and pretty much kept my interest for an hour and forty-five minutes, so I guess that’s saying something.
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