Based on the novel "24 Hours", Will Jennings (Stuart Townshend  Queen of the Damned, About Adam) is a successful anesthesiologist who constantly leaves to the city to go on conferences leaving his wife Karen (Charlize Theron  Devil's Advocate, Reindeer Games) and their severely asthmatic daughter (Dakota Fanning  I am Sam, Taken) to live alone. Suddenly, the daughter is taken hostage and Karen is confronted by the maniacal Joe (Kevin Bacon  Hollow Man, Tremors) who reveals their daughter has been kidnapped and is being held in a secret location for ransom. The entire plan will take exactly 24 hours to keep away suspicion from other people. Will is also taken hostage by Joe's wife Cheryl (Courtney Love  The people vs. Larry Flynt) who is keeping him on tabs. What ensues is a battle of tension, psychological breakdown, and a race to save their daughter before she's either killed or dies from asthma.
    I was rather interested to see where this movie went wrong and it's not completely a wasted effort. The director has the mood down to a tee and gives us an interesting villain in Bacon who pulls off the smooth psychotic mastermind very well. At one point even I felt like slugging him. The movie sets up certain scenes and though most of them don't play off too well, certain ones had me interested like the neat circumcision scene and when Fanning's character attempts to escape from her kidnapper. Dakota Fanning who should be in more films adds the emotional influence that's desperately missing from this movie while making her character truly admirable. She always knows how to absorb these roles and felt she could have been better used as more than a victim. The film does manage to give some very interesting plot twists that pretty much surprised me and does create some cool scenes like when Townshend's character paralyzes Love's character with medicine in brutal interrogation.

When a movie has many complications before it's release, it's a known fact that the movie will not turn out good. The title was originally "24 hours" which pretty much sums up the film, but to prevent confusion from the television series they renamed it "Trapped"... that's the best they could come up with. Then the stars of the film were hesitant about doing any promotion for the film and when it was finally released in the theaters it made only about a million bucks and disappeared from the public eye quicker than Justin Guarini from "American Idol". The movie is very flawed first off because it recycles the tired story of a kidnapping of a child, taunt the parents, commit psychological games on the parents blah, blah, blah. As you watch the film you can tell the director is trying desperately to create something new from an already overused concept as he mixes and meshes so much clichés and plot devices, dressing them up to look like new. It's all been done before in movies like "Ransom" which went about its plot much better. The characters in the film are very uninteresting and straight off the back we don't care what happens to either one of them. Stuart Townshend from the vampire trash "Queen of the Damned" plays the father who's barely in this film for some unknown reason and the script never gives us time to know him nor does his character resonate, so he becomes simply a plot device and a tired one. Often times, he's too calm or reserved about his daughter and when he is emotional it's hard to swallow. Charlize Theron doesn't pull off the helpless mother routine very well, sometimes going over the top dramatically, and underplays her emotions. Many of the plots twists and turns are very cheesy including the lipstick on the window and the near circumcision which I saw coming a mile away. The director also attempts to create some new devices like the plane scene, and the 24 hour concept which barely made any sense to begin with and relies on old ones like the kidnapped child bonding with her kidnapper. I wasn't surprised this movie turned out to be lowbrow because of all the problems but I was hoping for something original.

It kept my attention throughout the entire film, but ultimately, this is a very flawed and uninteresting thriller that tries hard to create something original from an already tired concept, but fails.