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OT: Too Much Suspense -- "Kidnap" with Halle Berry

posted 7 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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MINOR SPOILERS

All that Oscar bait out there -- I'm really getting psyched for The Post -- and here I am with a Redbox rental of the usual "slick modern B movie" type.

"Kidnap," with Halle Berry.

Someone else rented it, thought I'd like it with my Hitchcock jones and they were sorta kinda right. I never would have seen this at the theater, but as a rental, it got the job done. And intrigued me as so many "too much suspense" films do.

The plot is very simple and yes, we've seen variants before: The Man Who Knew Too Much(both versions) is the "seminal film of the genre"(good ol' Hitchcock: child kidnap movies; stop the assasination movies; slasher movies; James Bond movies -- he invented them all, if sometimes influenced by Lang.) But also "Ransom"(done quaintly with Glenn Ford in the 50s and bloodily with Mel Gibson in the 90s) and assorted other films.

"Taken" had superspy Liam Neeson's teeange daughter kidnapped(for sex slavery) and is in some ways the template for "Kidnap."

In "Kidnap," Halle Berry's six-year old son(a little boy of little life's experience) kidnapped away from her at a children's park but -- whereas superspy Liam Neeson almost immediately started punching, Kung-fu-ing and killing all the subsidiary kidnappers en route to rescuing his daughter, Berry is in "one note agony": much of "Kidnap" is a movie-long car chase with Berry trying to catch up with, and stay behind, the car with the kidnappers and her little boy. There is none of the satisfying episodic action of "Taken"(in which "old guy" Neeson beat up much younger guys and killed assorted mobsters and sex slavers en route to the big finish); this one is a "one woman show" often reminiscent of Spielbergs' TV movie classic "Duel"(one freaked out protagonist in a car, versus another motor vehicle).

Actually, as it went along, I recognized "Kidnap" as a kissing cousin of a long-ago nail-biter with Kurt Russell called "Breakdown," where his WIFE is kidnapped in the desert Southwest and Kurt must try to catch up with the kidnappers and save her.

Indeed, both "Kidnap" and "Breakdown" essentially have the same elements along the way(trying to alert police to the crooks)), and roughly the same climactic sequence: at the ironically homespun and banal "country home" which is really the kidnappers lair.

But "Kidnap" fails against "Taken" and "Breakdown" because it really boils down to Halle, Halle, Halle....all the time. With precious little interaction with any other characters except -- in chilling little moments -- the kidnappers themselves.

As I've noted before, Hitchcock would not have made movie like "Kidnap" because it is simply too suspenseful. Too grueling. No comedy relief. No snappy dialogue. No other supporting characters of note.

I also noted that Halle Berry is an Oscar winner -- and damned if her driven, freaked-out, over-emotional and hysterical performance here wasn't rather a dead ringer for her famous over-emoting in her Oscar win speech for 2001(funny, she hasn't even been nominated since.) Of course, a mother on the constant verge of losing her little boy to killer kidnappers WOULD be hysterical(see: Doris Day when first told by Jimmy Stewart in The Man Who Knew Too Much)...but this becomes exhausting.

As with so many other movies of its type, "Kidnap" is a B movie elevated by its Oscar winning star and pristine production values to look like more than it is.

Its grueling. Its one note. Its no fun.

But it is satisfying at the end, where Halle gets to confront the kidnappers(including one very ugly overweight woman who has me wondering why do unattractive people SEEK movie careers?) and gets her much-publicized line:

"You took the wrong kid!"

And finally gets that Righteous Revenge we've been waiting for.

For too long.

[–] [email protected] (5871) 7 years ago

For a moment I thought you were referring to another Halle Berry movie. But this one sounds pretty good. I may have to rent it.

I am referring to a 2013 film "The Call". Halle Berry plays a 911 operator who gets a frantic call from a teen-age girl who has been abducted. She is being held in the trunk of a car. The first two thirds of the film move at a breakneck pace and I was on the edge of my seat. Of course there's the clichéd requisite scene of a good Samaritan who almost foils the kidnapping, but doesn't have the sense to make HIS 911 call at a distance. The ending sort of fell flat for me though.

Then there's "Nick of Time" from 1977, another 'child is kidnapped' story. Johnny Depp plays a man whose young daughter is kidnapped in a train station by a villain played by Christopher Walken. Does anyone play a quiet. menacing bad guy better than he does?

The man was given an assignment by the kidnappers or they will kill his daughter. The story is then told in nail biting real time of 90 minutes. The kidnappers are watching him and he has no one to turn to for help. When I saw this film, I thought of Hitchcock. It's his usual formula of the innocent everyman caught up in someone else's evil scheme.

Did you ever see either film?

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

For a moment I thought you were referring to another Halle Berry movie. But this one sounds pretty good. I may have to rent it.

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Its solid suspense with a payoff at the end, that's for sure. A bit too "basic" in plot for me, but everybody's taste's vary. I think Hitchcock used to say that he felt he could never/should never make a movie too suspenseful because the audience would laugh to escape the intensity.

Hitchcock was famously called The Master of Suspense, but I think he knew how to "vary it up a bit." In a certain way, the suspense IS always there in a Hitchcock movie(nobody's believing James Stewart in Rear Window, then only one or two are; Cary Grant spends all of NXNW with the spies thinking he's Kaplan, the cops thinking he's a killer), but Hitchcock knew when to go for "something else"(sexy romance in the Stewart and Grant pictures, the comedy of the "Oxford dinners" in Frenzy.

Speaking of Frenzy, I recall reading a review by a reviewer for a small city paper when the film came out. The reviewer noted that he walked out once Blaney was fingered as the wrong man -- because "this was too suspenseful for me, I stopped enjoying the movie and left." Some movie reviewer.

Well, that 1972 movie reviewer would go nuts over "Kidnap." It just never lets up -- Berry chases the kidnappers by car, on foot, however -- and occasionally they hold the boy outside of the car, once with a knife at his throat.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Hey, here's something about Psycho from my memory banks:

When TV Guide would list a theatrical movie on TV in the 60s, they had a few quickie one-word descriptions:

MOVIE -- Comedy
A Night at the Opera.

MOVIE -- Mystery
The Maltese Falcon

MOVIE -- Drama
On the Waterfront

MOVIE -- Musical
Singin' in the Rain

and when the time came:

MOVIE -- Suspense
Psycho

...and as I recall, I had NEVER seen TV Guide use the word "Suspense" for a movie before then. Mystery, yes. Melodrama (for Dracula!) , yes. Horror, yes. Science Fiction(for "Them"), yes.

But suspense? And the capsule that followed said that "Psycho" was a film of "unrelenting suspense." I think this was TV Guide's way of saying, circa 1967, that Psycho was "way out there" in terms of how the suspense worked, y'know, the "Zone of Danger" in which anybody and everybody might get jumped by Mrs. B in the house? Or at the motel?

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

I am referring to a 2013 film "The Call". Halle Berry plays a 911 operator who gets a frantic call from a teen-age girl who has been abducted. She is being held in the trunk of a car. The first two thirds of the film move at a breakneck pace and I was on the edge of my seat. Of course there's the clichéd requisite scene of a good Samaratin who almost foils the kidnapping, but doesn't have the sense to make HIS 911 call at a distance. The ending sort of fell flat for me though.

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I missed "The Call," but I've found some internet reviews of Kidnap that say Halle Berry almost repeated herself here with Kidnap. and "The Call" makes me think of "Celluar," the thriller about Kim Basinger kidnapped and communicating via a dying cell phone. And "Cellular" was written by Larry Cohen, who also wrote "Phone Booth"(set in the single phone booth where a man is trapped by a sniper and forced to do and say bad things.) And Larry Cohen had, in the 70's...pitched "Phone Booth" to Alfred Hitchcock! It all traces back.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Then there's "Nick of Time" from 1977,

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1995, I think. Depp was too young in '77.

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another 'child is kidnapped' story.

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Well, what Hitchcock wrought with The Man Who Knew Too Much became a foolproof way to get your audience in the grip of suspense and anguish. Especially parents.

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Johnny Depp plays a man whose young daughter is kidnapped in a train station by a villain played by Christopher Walken. Does anyone play a quiet. menacing bad guy better than he does?

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I'll reveal here that I saw -- and very much liked -- Nick of Time, even as the reviews were rather unfairly tepid. Here was a movie that poured on ALMOST "too much suspense" but managed to take Depp down some side alleys and into a "stop the assassination mode" of The Man Who Knew Too Much, but with a twist: Walken wants DEPP to kill a politician or his child will be killed! Its "The Man Who Knew Too Much" dialed up a notch. Stewart and Day were told NOT TO TELL of an impending assassination. Depp is being forced to COMMIT the assassination -- and likely die accordingly or go "wrong man" straight to jail.

Other elements were good: the politician is a female; her husband is part of the plot; Walken has an equally merciless woman in his employ more than ready to kill the girl; and Depp finally enlists the aid of a black shoeshine man with an artificial leg to help save the day(you can bet the leg comes in handy). Very exciting conclusion.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

The man os given an assignment by the kidnappers or they will kill his daughter. The story is then told in nail biting real time of 90 minutes.

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This was a "real time" thriller -- ala Rope or High Noon. The gimmick was built into the title of the film.

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The kidnappers are watching him and he has no one to turn to for help. When I saw this film, I thought of Hitchcock. It's his usual formula of the innocent everyman caught up in someone else's evil scheme.

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Yes, more so than Kidnap, I think this one fed at the Hitchcock well...well. Depp has to try to convince the cops and the female politician of the plot without endangering his daughter, and of course one of the people he tells is...a bad guy.

(Its funny. Elsewhere on this board recently, I've OT talked about a thriller called The Ice Harvest..from November 2005. Well, Nick of Time was a thriller from November 1995. They don't seem all that long ago, either of them. And yet they are a decade apart, and Nick of Time is 22 years old. Its amazing how time compresses as you age and "look backward.")

BTW, Johnny Depp made the point when he accepted Nick of Time that he wanted to prove he could play a regular guy, and not just the weirdos he played in Ed Wood and Edward Scissorhands. Depp used the failure of Nick of Time to justify going back to weirdos.

But I liked Nick of Time very much and I thought Depp was SUPERB in the Jimmy Stewart/Cary Grant type role here.

[–] [email protected] (5871) 7 years ago

Duh, 1977? Where'd I get that from? lol I was looking at a list of Christopher Walken films to try and remember the title. I think I glanced at the wrong date!

I also thought Johnny Depp was excellent in it. I almost didn't recognize him with his own face! He's usually concealed under strange make-up. I wish he'd played more normal characters like this one. But he's seemed to make a career out of playing pirates.

Yes there are universal elements which can ramp up the scare factor and suspense, like putting a child in danger. Audiences who are parents especially, like you said, will really feel the anguish.

Mel Gibson starred in a film with the theme of a kidnapped child in his film 'Ransom' which came out in 1996 (or was it 1977, lol) I thought it was very suspenseful and I was totally blown away by the ending. Don't want to say more if people haven't seen it.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Duh, 1977? Where'd I get that from? lol I was looking at a list of Christopher Walken films to try and remember the title. I think I glanced at the wrong date!

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I make little mistakes like this all the time. I think a correction helps just to put the movie in proper time perspective. I wonder who would have played Depp's role in 1977? George Segal, maybe.

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Yes there are universal elements which can ramp up the scare factor and suspense, like putting a child in danger. Audiences who are parents especially, like you said, will really feel the anguish.

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I'm having a "mind freeze" right now, but I know there have been LOTS of child kidnap movies over the decades. And the suspense is instantaneous. And almost invariably the villains die hard for their audacity in putting a child's life in danger. (In the second Man Who Knew Too Much, 1956 constraints keep James Stewart from finishing the phrase "you son of a --" to the smarmy main kidnapper, or beating him Dirty Harry style -- but he DOES manage to kill the guy.)

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Mel Gibson starred in a film with the theme of a kidnapped child in his film 'Ransom' which came out in 1996 (or was it 1977, lol) I thought it was very suspenseful and I was totally blown away by the ending. Don't want to say more if people haven't seen it

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I won't either. Except to note that Glenn Ford played the Mel Gibson part in a much less violent version of the film(for the bad guys) in 56. Or was it '77?

[–] [email protected] (5871) 7 years ago

Maybe it was "Airport '77"? ha! No actually I just remembered another missing child story. This one was set on a plane, "Flightplan" with Jodie Foster. Have you seen it?

Kyle Pratt, isreturning from Europe with her six year old daughter and when she awakens from a short nap, her daughter is gone. She's not listed on the passenger manifest and the crew acts like Kyle is hallucinating that she has or had her daughter with her.

The suspense is a lot like a Hitchcock film. Of course if this was Rod Serling's story, Kyle's daughter would probably NOT exist.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Maybe it was "Airport '77"? ha!

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The one "proveable" 1977 movie! But remember this: "Airport 1975" inexplicably came out in 1974!

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No actually I just remembered another missing child story. This one was set on a plane, "Flightplan" with Jodie Foster. Have you seen it?

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Yes. Quite good. Nice anguish and a great villain in the reveal...but it DOES owe something to a specific Hitchcock film..more below.

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Kyle Pratt, isreturning from Europe with her six year old daughter and when she awakens from a short nap, her daughter is gone. She's not listed on the passenger manifest and the crew acts like Kyle is hallucinating that she has or had her daughter with her.

The suspense is a lot like a Hitchcock film.

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...called "The Lady Vanishes." And that film and THIS film share one element: a message "written" in the icy mosture of a window that proves the lady/child WAS real.

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of course if this was Rod Serling's story, Kyle's daughter would probably NOT exist.

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There ye go. Which fed the suspense of "Flightplan" -- was this a Hitchcock story? Or a Serling story?

I'll bet there are more child kidnapping stories out there.

I think Michael Douglas was in one called "Don't Say A Word," and -- though it had a twist in the tale -- Otto Preminger directed one called "Bunny Lake is Missing."

Kidnapped children -- the easiest way to create suspense this side of -- wrongly accused men and women! (ANOTHER Hitchcock specialty, but other creators got THERE first.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Speaking of kidnappers, Hitchocck did another movie with kidnapper villains, his last film: Family Plot.

Except in that one, it seems that the kidnap victims were all grown-up men(a millionaire, a bishop), who were treated quite well by the kidnappers(except that part of being held in a tiny windowless room, albeit one with a toilet and home-cooked meals brought in; still, the claustrophobia would kill ME.)

Hitchcock could generate SOME anger towards the kidnapping couple in Family Plot, but they were so polite to their adult victims that it took a lot of energy to convert them to more evil "trapped baddies out to save their own skins via murder" at the end.

[–] [email protected] (5871) 7 years ago

Oh Bunny Lake! That's an oldie but a goodie. I'd forgotten about that one. I saw it many years ago on TV. I think Carol Lynley was one of the true beauties in film back in the sixties.

I remember seeing Family Plot on television. Maybe I wasn't paying close enough attention, but the "plot" seemed so convoluted to me! I could hardly figure out what was going on.

Neither could I stand being held in a small space. I am claustrophobic too. I could never understand how some actors are willing to climb inside a coffin when they play a role in a horror film (like a vampire). Yikes! They'd have to use a body double for me.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Oh Bunny Lake! That's an oldie but a goodie. I'd forgotten about that one. I saw it many years ago on TV.

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My memories are vague. My parents took me to see it at the theater! (Sometimes, I don't think they thought things through.) There was the issue that maybe the mother was crazy and that Bunny Lake didn't even exist.

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I think Carol Lynley was one of the true beauties in film back in the sixties.

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I recall when Carol Lynley and Carroll Baker had "dueling Harlow movies" in release, in 1965 though the Lynley version was filmed on video quickly and rushed out ahead of the Baker one. BOTH ladies -- Carol and Carroll -- were cuties. And Carol Lynley got late-breaking fame by being a hot-pants clad beauty in The Poseidon Adventure. It helped refresh her career and that of Stella Stevens.

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I remember seeing Family Plot on television. Maybe I wasn't paying close enough attention, but the "plot" seemed so convoluted to me! I could hardly figure out what was going on.

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I like to say that it is a "structural remake of Psycho." Two stories merging into one, thus:

Psycho: Investigators(Arbogast, Lila, Sam) on the trail of a missing woman(Marion Crane) in one story run head on into a dangerous villain(Mrs Bates) in the second story. The closer the investigators get to the truth, the more dangerous(and deadly) it is for them.

Family Plot: Investigators (Dern, Harris) on the trail of a missing heir(Eddie Shoebridge/Arthur Adamson) in one story, run into a dangerous villain(kidnapper Arthur Adamson) in the second story. The closer the investigators get to the truth, the more dangerous and deadly it is for them.

Except Family Plot is told with no gore or horror.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Neither could I stand being held in a small space. I am claustrophobic too. I could never understand how some actors are willing to climb inside a coffin when they play a role in a horror film (like a vampire). Yikes! They'd have to use a body double for me.

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Ha -- it sounds like you are familiar with Brian DePalma's thriller "Body Double" from 1984, in which a novice actor playing a vampire has claustrophobia attacks in the coffin! DePalma substituted this character's claustrophobia for Stewart's Vertigo in a film that mixed Psycho, Vertigo...and porn. (The story leads the actor to a porn actress played by Tippi Hedren's daughter, Melanie Griffith.)

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But honestly -- even though the kidnappers in Family Plot were shown as being "good hosts" to their victims(letting them read, giving them a toilet, serving them great meals) -- I'd be hard-pressed to like them once they locked me in a room with no windows "indefinitely." I'd go nuts.

And indeed, Hitchcock fittingly climaxes his film by having the good guys lock the kidnappers IN their little room. "Hoisted on their own petard."

[–] [email protected] (5871) 7 years ago

Oh yes, I rented "Body Double" many years ago on VHS (was it THAT long ago?) It was scary and had a lot of interesting twists and turns along the way.
I hate when I can figure out the plot right from the beginning, but this movie kept me guessing.

[–] swanstep (2715) 7 years ago

it really boils down to Halle, Halle, Halle....all the time.

And almost continuous close-ups of her too I'll bet. Berry has one of those very rare, truly perfect faces.

My sense is, however, that Oscar notwithstanding, Berry got tagged as a bad-actress after Cat-Woman and playing a lack-lustre Storm in X-men. In a way, once you age out of ingenue roles then ungodly hotness can be an obstacle if you haven't really convinced acting-wise. Jessica Alba has had a similar trajectory a few years after Berry.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

And almost continuous close-ups of her too I'll bet. Berry has one of those very rare, truly perfect faces.

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Absolutely. A lot of close-ups, screen filling but beautiful..even in her anguish.

She was an "occasional burst of fresh beauty" in Kingsman 2 a few months ago, but here, she proves her "star-worthiness": few actresses could hold the screen and our attention like Halle Berry. And she does some impressive full-out running and other stuntwork. She "throws herself" into the physicality of the role.

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My sense is, however, that Oscar notwithstanding, Berry got tagged as a bad-actress after Cat-Woman and playing a lack-lustre Storm in X-men. In a way, once you age out of ingenue roles then ungodly hotness can be an obstacle if you haven't really convinced acting-wise. Jessica Alba has had a similar trajectory a few years after Berry.

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All true. Berry gets to know that she is one of the fairly small group of actors and actresses who have Oscars, but she also gets to know that Oscar is no guarantee of lasting stardom. Her taking movies like "The Call" and "Kidnap" as starring vehicles, plus high-paid cameos in things like Kingsman 2, tells me -- she's got a sense of her limitations and her agent knows where the money is.

I'm pretty sure Berry had a cable or even broadcast TV series recently, but I think it disappeared. The business can be treacherous, you can sink into the morass of entertainment out there today.