The Captive

At the moment of the off-screen abduction, Egoyan used the exact same shot that Villeneuve had used in Prisoners a year earlier. Otherwise, however, he goes in a different direction, showing us the villains and the background with the kidnapped victim right from the start while continuously introducing the main characters. Mixing up the chronology of certain events makes watching the film interesting. Everything starts to become clear to you after a few dozen minutes. Then there are some impressively chilling scenes and decently portrayed bad guys that give you goosebumps. The Captive is a decent, not entirely typical contribution to the category of similar genre films. (03/26/2020)

Here we can compare the work of Atom Egoyan and Denis Villeneuve. An underdeveloped screenplay that, while offering plenty of interesting scenes and passages of dialogue, oddly jumps around in the timelines and doesn't allow the viewer to improvise and make assumptions, or even to leaf through the exuberant content, as it's opaque. And, unfortunately, it is also not half as atmospheric (lacking camera work, music, lighting) as Prisoners, an element that accounted for 50 percent of the success that film last year. All in all, Captive is a class below, but still decent filmmaking. The most enjoyable is again the expressive Ryan Reynolds, who just knows how to put himself in these roles. (10/04/2015)