Check out these clips of Captivity.
Captivity surprised the hell out of me. It has one of the strangest production teams behind it. Roland Joffe as the director who’s been nominated for several academy awards and has helmed films from The Killing Fields to De Niro in The Mission to an uncredited stint on Super Mario Bros. to one of my all time camp favorites Goodbye Lover.
Let’s move on to the writer who is one of my all time favorite B-film screenwriters: Larry Cohen. Larry has crafted such celluloid pulp classics like Maniac Cop, The Stuff, Phone Booth, Delirious, The Ambulance, and Cellular to name a few. I forgot to mention that Larry Cohen is 68 years younger and could write circles around the likes of anyone from our MTV generation.
I have no idea how these two paired but the outcome is simply brilliant.
The story of Captivity is simple. A misguided actress (insert Lindsay Lohan comparison here) played by the beautiful Elisha Cuthbert (24, House of Wax, Old School) opens the film by remarking to a documentary interviewer her disconnection from the world. She then wakes up to a tropical breeze from a night of drunken debauchery and staggers towards what seems to be the open window. Then the projected image turns off and she stares at a brick wall of a cellar. Spinning around, she screams as we figure out she’s being held captive.
From here, she’s given clues as to why she’s there, taking a cue from the SAW creators as a set piece, but Cohen’s able to keep the momentum and suspense without the use of gore. Elisha soon finds comfort in knowing that a chauffeur played by Danielle Gillies (Spider-man 2, 3) is also being held captive. Together, the two of them form an unlikely passionate bond and soon discover why they’re both being kept there.
Cohen’s tight script and Joffe’s visual style saturate the film with a dismal bleakness that’s reminiscent of Brad Anderson’s The Machinist. Captivity was filmed in Moscow and one would never suspect it. I thought it was set in New York. The scenes carry a weight of on-the-nose dialogue and banter between the two as the sinister figure holding them sits back and watches from an assortment of television flat-screens.
Elisha turns in a great performance as the troubled actress/model. When questioned if she’s a “big deal”, she replies with “I’ve flaked a couple times” and wonders to herself if anyone’s going to miss her. This balance of the two characters brings viewers closer to the imagery of tinsel-town and celebrity life while nudging the fact subliminally that we’re all suffering from a form of emotional captivity.
While watching this film, my mind kept wandering back to Argento’s Suspiria and brilliant slasher film; Opera. Why I’m not sure. The film opens with a paper-mache mask being made and applied to someone’s face. I’m not going to say what comes next but it involves a sledge hammer and screaming. From that moment I was held captive by this film. Cohen’s prose and narrative style has a compulsive and clever way of piquing our interest. I mentioned before that this is a B movie. Looking back at Eric Roberts in The Ambulance, a person cannot help but mutter to oneself, ‘this is bad’, but I’m enjoying the hell out of it. Captivity allows us to savor its root pulp and cliché-challenged characters but not let us stray.
Joffe stages his scenes in a unique way by lacing in cheesy documentary footage of Elisha’s character. He borrows from Fincher & Koepp’s Panic Room and keeps the brunt of the film inside this house of horrors. When he takes us out to follow the police investigation into the disappearance of the actress, he gives us Pruitt Taylor Vince as a hulking chef of a restaurant that catered the last known party Elisha’s character went to. I have always been a fan of Pruitt and his film vitae that consists of the classic thriller Fear, Natural Born Killers, JFK, and Identity to name a few.
Even the cops on the case are pretty good. Michael Harney, a veteran TV actor, provides us with a gruff sensibility while the younger cop, Laz Alonso (Stomp the Yard) bridges the generational gap between the filmmakers and their target audience.
I highly recommend giving this film a chance when it opens in limited release this spring. But alas, with the barrage of big budget crap, this film will most likely slip through the cracks.
After seeing this, I will never forget to lock my doors again…
– Jack Reher
Release Date: May 18, 2007
Studio: Captivity Productions & After Dark Films
Director: Roland Joffe
Screenwriter: Larry Cohen
Starring: Elisha Cuthbert, Daniel Gillies, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Laz Alonso, Michael Harney
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