MovieChat Forums > The Captive (2014) Discussion > Curious. Is it supposed to take place in...

Curious. Is it supposed to take place in both Sudbury and Niagara?

posted 10 years ago by rhymobot
3 replies | jump to latest

If you're from Central Ontario you might recognize Hwy 69 which goes up to cottage country and beyond. And of course everyone knows Niagara.

Ryan Reynold's was almost exclusively "up north" as there was way more snow than the Niagara scenes, while his wife was mostly in Niagara.

Was the movie supposed to be based in two towns several hours apart? I assume it was as I remember RR saying something like "it'll take a me a few hours to get there" while talking to his wife on the cell while he was at work.

Why do you think Egoyan chose these two places? Do you think that he wanted the whiteout conditions to add grit to the mood of the film? And as the wife would be shown in hotel rooms a lot, do you think he wanted NF for a location so there would always be the visual of the falls in the background?

If I understand correctly, they lived together in Sudbury but in the 8 years since the disappearance, he continued to work there and the wife moved down to NF, where there is always a need for hospitality staff.

Anyway, I thought it was an average movie. I'm glad I watched it. It's not Prisoners but it's not a terrible movie IMO. But as others pointed out, there are a couple of head scratchers in this that I didn't think Egoyan would let slip into this. But they didn't ruin the movie for me. Like what was the point of the "details" guy who got introduced and never heard from again?

I thought there was some really good acting and range I wasn't used to seeing from RR, Enos, Speedman and Durand.

As well, I thought the whole new angle of "watching" the family of the victim was an interesting twist. And RR placing his phone in the land rover, threatening the diner manager so he would call the cops, then placing the poster over the woman's phone so he could steal it, and then doing a u-turn on the highway to go back to the diner knowing the cops would be there were all very clever.

And by the way, some people asked why the lady was just shooting at the tires instead of RR. When Durand handed the gun to her, she was reluctant to take it. I think that shows she's not willing to kill somebody in such a blatant manner. She could have been hoping he would crash and be injured and they could get her phone back and perhaps Durand would finish him off himself. Well that's my best explanation.

[–] qfal 10 years ago

Who was that woman? Did we ever get her name?

Actually, threatening the diner manager made little sense. Couldn't he just have said "Call 911 for me -- there are some people in the diner who are felons wanted by the police, I'm going to keep an eye on them in case they leave before the police get here."

[–] Erin-Leigh-14 9 years ago

i found it strange that they were clearly in the Sudbury area when Cass was kidnapped (the snow, trees, and rocks give it away even if you aren't familiar with the Levack arena where Cass was skating the day of the abduction), yet the Missing Person posters said she went missing in the Niagara region and the police are shown to be Niagara Regional police.. but the dad picks up teenage hitch-hikers in what appears to be Sudbury in the hopes one of them will be Cass. the diner where Cass gets abducted has a Canadian flag and an American flag, which is something you might see close to the border, but almost certainly not so far north. also, the part when the dad meets Cass is clearly filmed in Sudbury (he stays at a local motel), but i think we're meant to know the kidnapper's house is down south. the dad mentions it would take him 'a couple hours' to get from one locale to the other, which to people from Northern Ontario is a perfectly valid description of driving down south - but let's be honest, in weather like that you're looking at about 6 hours of driving. i find it hard to believe the bad guy would drive 12 hours for a five minute meeting, which makes me wonder if the northern setting isn't meant to be the Parry Sound area. that would knock off a few hours of drive time.

i'm not sure what to make of the different locations and the discrepancies. i think it's possible the director didn't feel the northern location was important enough to the story to take into account the logistics of travelling between Niagara Falls and Sudbury, or, since Sudbury wasn't mentioned by name, while that's where it was filmed, that may not have been the setting. neither of those options explain, though, why when the dad puts his cell phone in the spare tire and the police guy is tracking it on the computer, the roads shown in the movie are up north (again, the landscape is obvious), but the map shows the vehicle driving on Niagara Stone Road in Niagara-on-the-Lake. that one gave me a giggle.

have you tried that crazy wrap thing?! http://erinleighmckenzie.myitworks.com

[–] mathew5000 9 years ago

I think the movie was supposed to take place mostly in the area of Niagara Falls. When the father says he is "a few hours away" he might have been somewhere in southwestern Ontario, maybe Goderich or maybe somewhere near Guelph, but certainly not Sudbury. The film was shot partly in Sudbury but (as far as I could tell) it wasn't supposed to take place there at all.