Captive ** (2015, Kate Mara, David Oyelowo, Mimi Rogers, Michael K Williams, Leonor Varela) – Movie Review

Life-affirming, uplifting entertainment has its place but it needs a tougher, grittier, more rigorous, challenging edge.

Kate Mara plays real-life single mother drug user Ashley Smith who is held captive in her home by Brian Nichols (David Oyelowo) on the run after breaking out of jail and murdering the judge in his case and a couple of other in the courtroom.

What starts as a tough-minded thriller turns into a soft-minded anti-drugs, pro-God tract. Both as thriller and tract, it is unsubtle and none too effective, exciting or surprising. [Spoiler alert] The key turning event of the supposedly true story with Nichols repenting and letting Smith go so she can call the cops is spectacularly unexplained.

Somehow, Captive doesn’t seem very real or ring quite true, and it seems thin as a story, whereas a fiction would be more eventful and sensational to pump up the thriller element. The only surprise is that, at the end, the real Ashley Smith and Rick Warrin, the author of the self-help book featured prominently in the film (The Purpose-Driven Life) turn up on the Oprah Winfrey Show. There’s a sense here that something is being sold to us other than the film.

If it feels like a TV movie, that it is partly the material and partly because it is made by TV veteran Jerry Jameson, aged 80, though it is slickly and smoothly done. All very brisk and professional, with no rough edges, it is quite reasonably engrossing and involving.

And the acting by Mara, Oyelowo and Mimi Rogers, as Smith’s aunt who looks after her child, is more than entirely adequate. Oyelowo’s wife Jessica Oyelowo has a role as Meredith MacKenzie, Michael K Williams has a lot of conventional stuff to as Detective John Chestnut, the cop on the case, with Leonor Varela even more plodding along as his colleague Sergeant Carmen Sandoval.

The screenplay is by Brian Bird, whose mission as a writer/producer is to create life-affirming, uplifting entertainment projects. Bird is co-founder and partner with Michael Landon, Jr, of Believe Pictures, specialising in life-affirming and faith-affirming films and TV.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Movie Review

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