Secuestro express

Plot synopsis:
The film follows the kidnapping of Carla (Maestro) and her boyfriend when they are suddenly kidnapped in Caracas, Venezuela. Carla (Mía Maestro) and Martin (Jean Paul Leroux) are a young upper-class couple fresh from a night of dancing and partying when they cross paths with Trece (Carlos Julio Molina), Budu (Pedro Perez) and Niga (Carlos Madera), three men who make their living by kidnapping unwitting young adults to extort quick money from their wealthy parents.
Carla and Martin become their next victims and are sent on a terrifying overnight journey through Caracas as they wait for Carla's father Sergio (Ruben Blades) to hand over twenty thousand dollars - a small amount for a rich Caraqueño, but the equivalent of more than 8 years of the Venezuelan minimum wage.
They are emotionally and physically hurt, but soon form a relationship with their captors to try to escape. However, none of their plans pan out. They continue in the Land Cruiser, listening and understanding, even if slightly, their captor's point of view. Through the many mishaps they encounter, they begin to, albeit scarily, bond with the kidnappers.
Martin flees the kidnappers in a crowded square, telling Niga to kill his girlfriend, abandoning her. However, he is soon apprehended by one of their cronies and returned to them and murdered in the trunk of a taxi.
After her father pays their ransom, the kidnappers heatedly argue over her fate, between murder, rape, and release. Trece pays his share to the others to release her unharmed, and Carla is soon released, only to be found by another set of kidnappers. However, Trece returns to the scene and shoots them, freeing her again at that time. In the final scene she can be seen with much more modest attire and an inelegant car, continuing her work with sickly, impoverished children.

Tags: violence, murder, sadist

Review:
It is sad, but real, people in Latin America are going to situations just as described in the movie.Mia Maestro, really showed to all of us her talent, for those Spanish speakers know how different the Argentinian accent is, and she was able to imitate the Venezuelan accent perfectly.I am sure does who are related to Venezuela when they go and see this movie will have an after taste in their mouths for several days.
"Secuestro Express" shows the underbelly of a society that is decaying as we speak, a place torn apart by economics and class differences, and a place that is unforgiving and cruel to most of its population.The 24-hour drama follows a kidnapped couple and their victimizers as their drama unfolds.
Years ago, Warner Brothers re-released its two landmark gangster films of the thirties, "Little Caesar" and "Public Enemy" with a brief prologue that said the gangster was a problem "we the public must eventually solve." Writer/director Jonathan Jakubowicz's "Secuestro Express" ends with a epilogue that notes that "half the people of the world suffer from malnutrition, the other half from obesity." It's a stunning message, but it almost gets lost because the film it caps is a stunning thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat and for the most part, keeps you from focusing much on the social issues involved.Set in Caracas,Venezuela, the film examines what has become almost a regional pastime in Latin America, kidnapping.
Jean Paul Leroux is also good as the male half of the trendy couple, a man with secrets of his own.But the star of this film is the female kidnap victim, played by the beautiful and unreasonably talented Mia Maestro.
"Secuestro Express" is a neat little twisty thriller in the exaggerated style of gritty British crime dramas like "Layer Cake," with a pointed political and social overlay.Using swooping, in-your-face close-up cameras, limited narration and dossier-style on screen character and time descriptors, writer/director Jonathan Jakubowicz, in his full-length fiction debut, captures a docudrama feel to make the kidnapping of a young, lighter-skinned couple by a motley group of "nigros" (darker-skinned) thugs, with a variety of psychological and financial motives for doing this "work", a commentary on class in Latin America, specifically in Caracas, Venezuela.The individuality of all the characters, including the criminals, adds to the explosive unpredictability as stereotypes of Latin American culture are ironically skewered, including oligarchies, macho men, religion and sensuality, as each person uses political and class rhetoric to justify greed, selfishness and condescension on all sides.Drugs are caustically shown to have pervasively corrupted and enthralled all levels of the society through a harrowing picaresque exploration of "the ghetto" (as the subtitles translated the geography).The acting is excellent, particularly Mía Maestro, of TV's "Alias," who goes through an entire spectrum of emotions.
Jean Paul Leroux as her boyfriend "Martin" is very good at shifting gears as our sympathies shift around him.The song selection felt very atmospheric and the soundtrack kept the tension ratcheted up.The "fire next time" coda didn't quite work or add much to what we think the characters learned that night except assuring us that life ominously goes on among all the classes despite the continuing sharp differences..
"Secuestro Express" is an independent film about a common frequent reality in Latin America: Kidnappings.
After Jakubowickz made his story longer, the characters took shape, and what could have been a tale of soulless kidnappers, is a glance at human beings who care for their city, even when they do what they do.Jakubowickz' ferocious camera is a representation of the Venezuelan reality; it moves unsure, it accelerates constantly.
In fact, there are thousands of kidnappings like the ones this movie illustrates, every day."Express"; quick, effective and only sometimes successful.
But that message won't make anyone change, because it takes a lot more in a world like this one.What I can say for sure are two things: "Secuestro Express" is a calling to Venezuelan cinema, these days when it's so difficult to make a complete movie; and it is so real and so true, that you will be scared to be out on the street after watching it..
Maybe the photography and shooting could have been better.Second and finally, and for those who called this movie "unrealistic", definitely they do not live in Latin American Cities (Caracas in this particular case).
Gave it the benefit of the doubt thinking it could be the theater's fault, but once again nope: letters in Twisted-Metal-Black evoking style started popping up on screen naming each character in the movie, and those letters were decently sharp and in focus.
The acting was good enough, even great at some points.Now, the movie can be a little bit biased, which is not necessarily bad.
When you see the trailers you expect no more than a action movie...but for those who live in Venezuela ( as myself) there's nothing of action o fiction in this movie, what you see there is the sad but true life that we live here in Caracas, every day when you're walking down the street, when you're driving you're car, when you're at home, you're always thinking, am i going to be next?
TO not make it so much of a complain about Venezuela but about the way the film was turned, I would like to say, this movie may be "fiction"cause its was taken in an controlled environment, but what you see in that movie happens everyday, its not something COOL, or JUST "bang bang" its a reality for all those who live here, it would be great if people saw that and not just ohhh cool another action movie....
Probably Jakubowicz is the start of a new wave of filmmakers long time needed in Venezuelan Cinema.This movie has a new kind of approach in every aspect: production, direction, screen writing, marketing, etc.
The film representation of the characteristics of poverty in Latin America, and of the phenomena it originates, has developed through the years, from the populist portraits of the 1930s and 1940s, in which being poor almost equaled sainthood (as in "Nosotros, los pobres"), to the movies of today called "porno-misery" by some critics.
As almost all of the good or bad films dealing with poverty, there is no intention to point reasons: in these movies, you seldom hear of bad distribution of national wealth, hoarders, landowners or creole oligarchies that have sold their countries to transnationals.
For example, when the kidnapped woman (Mia Maestro) is released momentarily in a lonely place, far away from Caracas, instead of running for her life, she falls and cries in the dust, a strategy that permits the director and cinematographer to make a few nice shots of Maestro, and a chance to add a second ending to the story.
Even though the violence is present at all times in the movie it is done in a very artistic and professional way, without recurring to unnecessary crudeness (the violence in itself is quite crude).When watching this, just keep in mind that this is the reality of people living in Venezuela.
More people have been killed by guns in Venezuela than in the Iraq war in the same period of time (and both countries have pretty much the same population).This movie was also very much disliked by the government, as it shows one of the many truths they want to censor.Finally if you understand Spanish you'll notice the big difference between the language that the "rich" and "poor" people speak (it is widely exaggerated, though, but a very nice touch indeed), so subtitles are highly recommended.
I hope that they are happened to those producing of Hollywood to make a better movie completely in Venezuela, where they show our reality better with regard to the delinquency, the traffic of drugs or the political problems.
And for those who say it's unrealistic I'll just tell you this: EVERYBODY that lives in caracas has a close friend or family that has been mugged, kidnapped or ruffied.True story.For those that say actors don't play well: Those guys are known Venezuelian singers and come from a very poor background.
They know the life, they have lived it, they surely have never kidnapped everyone but in an environment where growing older than 25 years old is considered lucky, they have seen and done their fair share of violence.Little side note, this movie was supposed to be presented at the Oscars for the Best foreign movie.
It'll sound perverse, but it's an amusing situation; one of a number of gut wrenching and rather harrowing predicaments a number of characters find themselves in within Venezuelan born Jonathan Jakubowicz's film; a man painting a grim, glum and quite frightening picture of his home nation, indeed, his home city: the sort of place where the criminals try one over the criminals by targeting the weak in-between.That city is Caracas, the capital of the aforementioned Venezuela, as a number of short and sharp voice-overs consistently remind us.
Express Kidnapping, to give it its English title, sees a young couple in Carla (Maestro) and Martin (Leroux) swiped off of the street by a gang of equally young, but significantly less-better off hoods armed with guns; a 4x4; a taste for ransom money and, eventually, an equally alarming taste for the lone female in the vehicle.
That isn't to say the danger evaporates, because it doesn't, but the kidnapped leads come to realise their situation and a similar progression is occurring with the audience as our own opinions and realisations on the situation are unfolding at exactly the same time.If we think of films that are either wildly kinetic in their delivery and overall feel or just carry that lush, good-looking sensibility from recent years, of which they might also be categorised as 'crime' films, Pierre Morel's 2008 film Taken might spring to mind.
One of the very few films of this ilk from recent years that I thought pulled off this 'all over the place'; 'revenge and violence carries a certain "to be looked at-ness" appeal' without ever feeling exploitative was Tarantino's first Kill Bill volume; a film that utilised its female lead's chaotic and tragic circumstances to project real sense of anger as the film unfolded to whatever style and atmosphere Tarantino implemented on his text.I think Express Kidnapping balances whatever political or social issues the director has with what he's studying with that trashy, pulpy, throw-away approach you feel he wants to additionally get across.
The film's ending is deceptively upbeat, but Jakubowicz is telling us the only real way anything is ever going to get done is if the scum continue to stalk the other scum and wipe them out for us, 'us' being the more innocent Venezuelans as well as the government themselves.Express Kidnapping doesn't exploit its subject matter for purposes of entertainment, while its shifts from a relaxed sense to a thoroughly frightening scenario throughout never feels mis-guided nor mis-judged.
The acting is very good, but the image quality is not very sharp or maybe the theater I saw it was not very good.I have been to Caracas, Venezuela, many times on business trips and I have never been robbed or kidnapped.
It seems like the wealthy director Jakubowicz (he acknowledges that on a newspaper interview), wants to purposely portray his own country as hell, just for the purpose of discrediting the current elected government, which favors the poor.On the other hand, the movie perpetuates stereotypes found in Venezuelan and other Latin American media: The dark-skinned ones are the criminals, the bad guys, or the servants.The last movies I've seen filmed in Venezuela were The Revolution will not be Televised (ChavezTheFilm dot com) and Arachnophobia, highly recommended, especially the former..
"Secuestro Express" translates roughly as "quick turn-around kidnapping" and, according to the makers of this film, is becoming an increasingly common crime in Latin American.
The film is a gritty, grainy, low budget flick about three thugs who kidnap a beautiful woman with and her boyfriend to get some fast cash via the secuestro express methodology.
Okay but nothing to get excited about and fraught with the usual subtitles, obvious budget constraints, etc., Secuestro Express makes for a worthy watch for those who like their crime flicks straight up with a twist and a message from south of the border.
The bad taxi cabbie in the "it's a small Caracas we live in" was insulting, not to say implausible.Although it dragged the subject of the poor against the rich, criminal against the wealthy, this could have been a much better film without that red hot politically-charged layer.
Last night, after leaving my house I drove into the same streets that were reintroduced to me on screen shortly after having reached the movie theaters here in Caracas.The film opened with a raw and realistic, yet beautiful introduction to our city, especially during the strike of 2002, showing footage of the most violent scenes during that time, but also showing some very typical things with which anybody from Caracas can identify with.Visually the Film is very well done.
If you do understand the language, however...and by this I mean "Venezuelan slang", you'll enjoy the fresh and funny dialogs unlike any other Venezuelan movie due to the improvisation of most of the actors, who I think did a very good job.The movie feels very real, yet the film doesn't get stuck on trying to portray a political or social situation.
There IS a story and there are several interesting, funny and f*cked-up twists.It's a very entertaining and enjoyable movie and without a doubt a treasure of Venezuelan cinema...****SPOILER***** Personally I found the ending extremely corny for several reasons.
this is kinda how it would be..., but there ARE good, healthy and decent people in this city and I do think that perhaps the movie failed to show this a little bit.
A. cop-show "Dragnet" on the road, it might play something like "Secuestro Express." "This is the city, Caracas, Venezuela.
This movie is simply an offensive, unreal and exploitative movie made by a Cheap Tarantino rip off, who didn't hesitate to sell out his country culture to get a shameful pass to Hollywood..Jakubowikz is even lower than the characters depicted in his awful piece of cinematic dung.It portraits Caracas (and Latin America by rebound) as a horrible and inhospitable hellhole of drugs, constant street violence and utterly corrupt and extremely putrid Cops (and Military) , with nothing redeeming and not a trace of law and order at all.The stupid, unreal kidnappers depicted here justify their actions by pointing out that most of the country is starving, like it were an excuse to commit crime and behave sadistically."Gangsta" Robin Hoods, what an original idea !!
The darker a guy is, the worse.3.- The "poor little rich girl cliché" who volunteers at a public clinic and loves the "poor and the pauper" but also likes to party wildly, swallow tons of pills and several other drugs (a cross between Mother Theresa and Sid Vicious) AND, inexplicably, is deeply in love and ENGAGED with 4.- An incredibly shallow, insensitive, inhuman, unmoral, cocaine-loving, unlikable, twisted sociopath, stupid, antipathetic upper class boyfriend.There's some unreal situations: After a five year relationship and in a matter of few hours, Martin, the creepy Boyfriend:1.- Goes "out of the closet" and, in a hateful and Homophobic manner, he sodomizes (and enjoys it!!) a gay drug dealer who just saved his life (and who happens to be an old friend!!) in a middle of a death threatening situation, with his five-year-relationship fiancée left alone with the thugs, with both of their lives at stake.It takes a mindless, utterly twisted inhuman pervert in hard drugs to have that kind of behavior in a situation like this.
Maybe He'd like to hatefully sodomize a Gay guy while both his and her girlfriend's lives are at stake.Or maybe He already did it.This exploitation movie is Venezuelan (And Latin American) cinema, pride and dignity at his lowest.BTW, The miserable, sold-out, Tarantino cheap rip off Director IS A LIAR, He has NEVER been Kidnnaped, He LIED to gain Publicity and to Justify and to give "social relevance" and "reality" to his repugnant,vile and UNREAL excuse of a movie.When the movie debuted in Venezuela, He pointed that He had never been Kidnapped.
And the latter enjoying it.Mia Maestro shows She can act, is really a shame she was part of this repulsive abomination.PLEASE, don't believe this atrocious movie, Venezuela is much more than that.Is not ONE out of ten, is ZERO out of ten.
I think it could have been done more cleverly by explaining why Martin didn't immediately go to the police and by somehow making it more likely that he'd end up in the hands of the kidnappers' friend..
is verified that to all of us, be Venezuelans or not, we they like the true histories, without fiction neither nothing, that show more the misery of our countries, and that better shown of the life in Caracas that shows "Secuestro express".It can show what we have lived the Venezuelans in this despotic government of Chávez, How?
All in the movie works too well."Secuestro express" is a masterpiece, and not only I say as Venezuelan, as critician too, the special effects with the DV cameras it really throw us to an exciting movie and I can see many times without getting tired of it.So, to the world, Venezuela is a truthfully country, very rich, but as you well know, with presidents as Chavez, we are screwed up and we're converted in a "País tercermundista".
Directed by Jonathan Jakubowicz, from Venezuela, his movie focuses on a deadly reality of the country, as well of some Latin America countries where kidnapping is serious business for a criminal element that knows the ropes as to what to do.
I guess the director is antichavez like most upper-class people in Venezuela, but mixing politics seems unnecessary to me in this case, since at the end you get to see why Chavez is there in the first place, which is the huge inequality left by the so called democratic governments throughout Latin America.