Atom Egoyan went to the Cannes Film Festival this spring with this latest effort, "The Captive," and the results were not good. Not even close. Our own Jessica Kiang noted that were boos scattered at her screening, and her savage review called the film a "lurid, credulity-stretching" dud, and something of a "Prisoners"-lite as it also tackles a missing child, and the consequences that fall out on her parents and those around them.
Starring Ryan Reynolds, Scott Speedman, Mireille Enos, Rosario Dawson, Kevin Durand, Alexia Fast and Bruce Greenwood, the story centers around the disappearance of young girl, and what follows when eight years later, clues begin to surface that she’s alive. What gets uncovered is something sinister, criminal and creepy, with the film hopping around in time, to tell a story of the investigation and much more. On paper it sounds like something decent, but in execution, it appears not to have worked. A new trailer is here for you to judge for yourself.
"The Captive" will open on September 5th. Watch below.
As if the boos are any indication of the validity, artistically or otherwise, of a film. La Dolce Vita was booed mercilessly at its first screening, The Tree of Life was savagely booed. Critics at the press screening went wild (in my opinion rightly so) subsequently commenting that the film was only a series of attractive screen savers. Reviews were for the most part scathing, not mixed, scathing. And yet the film was nominated for Academy Awards. Your critic's review made me laugh it was so over the top negative, especially in comparison to the French reviews of the film. The closing paragraph of her review even mentions that the film contains a "a crude, distastefully regressive subtheme which suggests that well, of course that this is what happens to girls and to women (even successful, intelligent, independent women) when they are left alone even for a moment by their menfolk. Boo, indeed". Wow. Seriously?
Sounds a lot like the plot of Exotica, minus the strip club and the fact that the girl is most assuredly dead in that film.
atom egoyan and ryan reynolds… a match made in hell. what a clown show. hard to believe this played at cannes.
Is that September 5 opening date the same for the US? That poster/trailer are both for its Canadian distributor eOne and not its American distributor A24.