Flawed but entertaining thriller

Rating: 7/10 (27 March 2006)

Overall the movie was entertaining. But, leaving the theater, I was disappointed because Mr. Lee seemed to be more interested in flaunting his moviemaker chops instead of insuring his story worked and because Jodie Foster inexplicably tanked her role. The biggest hole in the story is, if the police had matched up cell phones and/or clothing with hostages, the perps would have been easily exposed. At the very least they would have weeded out 99 percent of the genuine hostages, leaving a very small number to deal with. How to explain Jodie Foster's terrible awful acting job? At no point did she seem authentic. It was a parody, an extremely poorly done parody, of the fixer character. If I hadn't witnessed it, I would have declared Ms. Foster incapable of doing what she did. Even with all that, the plot is clever, and Clive Owen and Denzel Washington do their things with panache.