A thriller for dumb people

Rating: 3/10 (21 September 2013)

What a disappointment. I'm a huge fan of Denis Villeneuve, I love abduction films, I like the cast... but this movie was just boring. At one point you'll be about 20 minutes ahead of the supposedly genius detective--who doesn't seem to do much detecting whatsoever.
The biggest sin of the film is that you don't care about anyone in the film. You don't care who the "bad" person is, you don't care if the kids are alive or dead, you don't care about anything and you have a LOT of time to not care about it -- more than two and a half hours!
Seriously, at ninety minutes this story MIGHT have been captivating. At 150+ it's mind blowingly dull. None of the characters have any basement--none of them have more than a sentence or two worth of backstory to inform their present, the women characters are absolutely wasted. Poor Maria Bello can never catch a break--her character lies in bed the whole movie. Terrible waste.
Viola Davis is the best of the cast--she almost always is, but even she doesn't get much room to do anything.
The film also goes for numerous cheap shots, blatantly obvious red herrings with no purpose but to manipulate the audience.
What a waste of pretty much everyone involved. Ugh.