CAPTIVE – The Review

As bland as its title, CAPTIVE is an indifferent home invasion thriller in which a drug-addicted single mom is held hostage by a desperate man who’d just murdered four people. Hostage movies follow such age-old patterns that it’s rare to be surprised by one and CAPTIVE is no exception. Occasionally the genre will be transformed by brilliant filmmaking, as it was in something like THE DESPERATE HOURS or DOG DAY AFTERNOON. Not this time. The true subject should have been given energy but all I felt while watching CAPTIVE was a big yawn.

Taking place over a single day, CAPTIVE closely follows an event that took place in Atlanta in 2005. Brian Nichols (played by David Oyelowo) was on trial for rape when he overpowered and beat a female guard, then took her gun. He calmly walked into a courtroom and fatally shot a judge and a court reporter then another guard before escaping the facility. He became the subject of a city wide manhunt and killed a detective before finding his way to the apartment of 27-year old waitress Ashley Smith (Kate Mara), a complete stranger. A mess herself, Ashley had lost her husband to drug-related violence and was battling her own meth addiction. Her daughter Paige (Elle Graham) is staying with her aunt (Mimi Rogers) while she tries to get her act together. The movie mostly focuses on the 8 hours Ashley and Brian spend together. He threatens her and ties her up in the tub, but she’s never hurt. “Got any weed?” No, but she has some meth lying around so he smokes that (that’ll calm him down!). Ashley turns for guidance to Rick Warren’s inspirational best-seller The Purpose Driven Life, a book forced on her by a well-meaning co-worker that very day. She reads it aloud, hoping it will bring out some humanity in the killer. Meanwhile, Detective John Chestnut (Michael Kenneth Williams) is taking charge, barking orders at his underlings, though he has no clue where the fugitive is hiding.

CAPTIVE presents a basic movie situation and delivers it in an uninspired and pedestrian manner. It’s based on Ashley Smith’s book about the encounter, so knowing she’s the only hostage and that she survives diminishes any tension. Limiting much of the action to Ashley’s small apartment eliminates distractions and allows for a closer focus on these two characters but the story is inert and fails to excite. Much of the problem is the direction by 81-year old Jerry Jameson whose TV career goes all the way back to The Andy Griffith Show and Gomer Pyle. He sets an appropriately gloomy tone but his TV-level compositions and close-ups fill the space where motivation and character-building ought to be. He fails to exploit the claustrophobia of the premise while Lorne Balfe’s low-rent synthetic score adds a cheapness to the proceedings.

David Oyelowo is a powerful screen presence but underplays his role. Brian Nichols had just murdered four people, but by the time he arrives at Ashley Smith’s home, he seems much too calm and composed. He bounces off the walls perfunctorily when he smokes the meth, but you’d think the adrenaline from his crimes would have already put him at least halfway there. We’re told Brian is desperate to make contact with his newborn son but even the actor best known for playing Martin Luther King (in SELMA) makes it impossible to have a speck of sympathy for a character who’s introduced gunning down four innocents. Kate Mara is fine but does not make much of an impression. This may be a true story but the enterprise seems contrived–more like an actors’ workshop than a drama. The poster for CAPTIVE depicts Oyelowo running, gun in hand, like this in an action film. The producers of CAPTIVE (including Oyelowo) may have been wise to have played up the Christian angle (as some recent box-office surprises have proven). Preserving the original title of Ashley Smith’s book Unlikely Angel, would have been a good start instead of the generic CAPTIVE, and more emphasis on how The Purpose Driven Life affected this story may have helped but as is, neither the dramatic or religious details of Ashley Smith and Brian Nichol’s encounter ever come into satisfying focus.

1 1/2 of 5 Stars

Read my recent interview with actor David Oyelowo HERE