Genre: Thriller
Premise: A woman’s 4 year old son is kidnapped. With no way to contact the authorities, she’s forced to chase the kidnappers herself.
About: I don’t know if this makes me cool or uncool but I’ve never watched ‘Jackass,’ the show Knate Gwaltney was on. Gwaltney sold his spec to Fox Searchlight last month. John Moore will direct and exec produce. Di Bonaventura and Erik Howsam will produce via Di Bonaventura Pictures.
Writer: Knate Gwaltney
Someone had mentioned a couple of weeks ago that they were tired of this new Taken takeover trend. And it is starting to feel old. Though you can’t fault Knate Gwaltney for capitalizing on the studios’ desperate bid to create more of these save-or-avenge-my-family-member clones. That’s part of being a writer in this stingy spec market. When the opportunity presents itself, take advantage. My issue with Kidnap is that that’s all it does. It doesn’t push or surprise us in any way (like the highly buzzed about “Prisoners“, for example). It’s solid writing for sure, but I wanted more out of the story.
Kate is the kind of mom who’s popular with the dads at the soccer game. She has an adorable little 4 year old boy named Frank. Frank does a number of adorable little boy things while Kate drives to the local shopping mall. Kate wants to get something sexy for her husband so they head inside the JC Penny where Frank starts playing a little game of hide-and-seek. Yeah, we know this isn’t going to end well. For some reason Kate lets Frank run around outside while she’s in the changing room, and when she emerges to pay for the dress, the game of hide and seek becomes a lot more complicated. Frank is nowhere to be found. Kate starts freaking out, frantically accusing every male in sight. With time ticking off the clock, the saleslady makes a missing boy announcement. But Kate, determined not to let her boy end up on the back of a milk carton (do they still do that?) takes matters into her own hands and goes to find her son!
She barrels out of the mall into the parking lot and there, way way down at the end, she spots two people stuffing her son into a brown hatchback. Fuck! She sprints towards them, screaming for someone to help. But no one’s around and the tactic actually works against her, as they hurry into the car and shoot off. Kate obviously didn’t watch Taken. You’re supposed to call the kidnappers and offer a very calm but threatening ultimatum. Oh wait, Kate realizes her phone is with Frank! Dammit. So she jumps in her mini-van and begins a torrid Los Angeles style car chase through the city.
This is where Kidnap spends the bulk of its time as the movie is essentially one giant car chase. Gwaltney does a good job highlighting the collective apathy our society has for anyone in trouble these days. Even though Kate’s able to get right up next to the hatchback numerous times, scream and yell and honk and tell other passengers to call the police, no one seems that interested in helping her.
There are some solid set-pieces. When the kidnappers near a toll stop – Kate hot in pursuit – they stop their car a few hundred feet short in order to avoid being boxed in. A tepid and awkward showdown begins right there in the middle of the highway, with cars whizzing by obliviously. There’s also a gnarly kill scene when a bike cop gets caught between their two cars and the kidnappers ram him right into the side of Kate’s mini-van, mangling his body into a bloody pulp. Somewhere, Eric Estrada wept.
Watching Kate desperately try to keep the hatchback in site – knowing that if she loses it, she loses her son – keeps the intensity up. But the script starts to get repetitive after awhile. Gwaltney does his best to mix it up, but there are only so many things you can do in a 90 minute car chase. Taken, Prisoners, Rites Of Men, Snatched – they’ve all ‘taken’ me down this avenue before. I didn’t want to see anybody chase each other anymore. I wanted to see people hold hands, kiss, and tell each other that they were swell. Had I read this five months ago? It very well may have been a completely different story. But coming in at the tail end of a trend, it has a ‘been-there-done-that’ feel. Final verdict? Interest barely kept.
Link: No link
[ ] trash
[x] barely kept my interest
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I want to further address what Tarson brought up the other day – trends. But more specifically trying to capitalize on the tail end a trend. If you don’t have an agent or you’re an unsold writer, it isn’t a good idea to try and capitalize on a trend. All the writers with agents and credits? Those are the guys that get the first shot at capitalizing on trends. They’re the ones with an idea or an old script in the current “hot genre” and they’re the ones who get meetings with buyers to pitch these projects right off the heels of a film’s success. By the time you query everyone with your idea, send it out to the interested parties, have them actually read it, and they actually go out to buyers with your script and those buyers read it – it will likely be 5-6 months down the line. By that time, the trend will be over. Like Tarson says, stick with what you love, make sure it’s marketable, keep writing scripts, and when you make your inroads into the business, you’ll have a much easier time capitalizing on the current trend.
