plot : a rich psychiatrist with a great home life gets his cute daughter kidnapped by some bad guys who want him to extract some information from the mind of one of his nutty patients .
of course , the patient is not cooperative and the doctor only has a few hours to comply with their demands , before they kill his daughter . pretty good premise , no ?
critique : if you 're not a fan of movies packed with plot holes , inconsistencies and yes , even more plot holes , heed my words and skip this hollow thriller
.
and i do n't like saying that either , since this film actually had some potential and started off pretty well .
sure , the story is basically just an amalgamation of ransom , primal fear and nick of time pureed into one , but the whole " psychiatrist working against the clock " thing , actually had me engaged at first .
but it 's at about the halfway mark of this movie , that the bottom drops out and all that we 're left with are a lot of questions and very few plausible answers
.
we get the overly smart kid who manages to " pull one " over on the bad guys .
we get a weak woman with her leg in a cast beating the crap out of a tough bad guy .
we get douglas ' character , a new york uppedity psychiatrist , suddenly turning into an action hero , with moves and attitude to boot .
and what about the film 's main plot point ?
why would the bad guys still give a crap about this thing after 10 years , and even more so
, why would they only give the shrink until the day 's end to do his part ?
( you waited 10 years , what 's another few days ?
- or why not set up another heist instead ? ) .
i 'll tell you why , it 's because we would n't have a ( bad ) movie
otherwise , that 's why !
and many , many more .
ugh ,
whatever the case , it was just about the time that douglas ' character suddenly removed murphy 's character from the mental home ( and how come
she went with him so nicely ?
i thought she did n't trust him ) , that i turned to my buddy and asked when the movie had turned into a joke .
and a few bogus chase and action sequences later , we were left with a long - winded ending that did little to answer any other questions i might 've still had , and actually brought up even more contradictions .
badly put together , this movie features some decent acting , some nice cinematography and an initially interesting premise , but
loses it all in a haze of plot miscues which ultimately leave you with little care for anyone .
in fact , if it was n't for brittany murphy 's excellent portrayal of a traumatized teen , jennifer esposito 's embarrassing performance as a police woman ( yeah , right ! watching her delivering lines was the funniest part of this flick-
but it was n't supposed to be ) and
michael douglas ' cool " regular guy " part , there would be little reason to remain seated until the end of this picture .
incidentally , can anyone please give me one good reason why esposito 's character was in this movie in the first place ?
she was completely superfluous .
and on top of all that , by the end of this flick , the director seems to have realized how dumb the audience must be to have bought most of the garbage that he 'd been shoveling out for the hour and a half prior , and decides to add insult to injury by flashing back to an earlier character 's death when one of the bad guys dies ,
just so we know ( as an audience ) , that the two are interrelated somehow .
ooooh , thanks , mr .
fleder .
. .
i appreciate the spoon - feeding , dude .
. .
yum , yum .
.
.
but how about explaining every other plot point in your film that made no sense ?
whatever .
either way , i do n't give a rat 's ass because this movie is a dog and that 's unfortunate because it actually did have some good points going for it .
see it if you like dumb thrillers .
incidentally , if you appreciated along came a spider , you will likely enjoy this film as well .
they both start off with interesting premises , only to toss all logic and sense out the window about halfway through .
where 's joblo coming from ?
along came
a spider ( 4/10 ) - girl , interrupted ( 5/10 ) - kiss the girls ( 7/10 )
- primal fear ( 7/10 ) -- seven ( 10/10 )
Output: N