In the movie, Michael Douglas plays Dr. Nathan Conrad, a noted and great child psychologist who is called in by his friend to observe a young girl who holds mysterious information. Now Conrad’s daughter is held hostage by mysterious criminals who claim the girl from the institution holds pivotal information that is connected to them. Now he must rush against time and retrieve the information for the kidnappers before time runs out and his daughter is killed. I thought the entire mood of the movie is pretty good.
The movie starts off with a botched bank robbery and fast- forwards into the present time. We see Jennifer Esposito who plays a detective investigating mysterious murders that don’t seem to make sense. This movie is alot like a big puzzle. At first there are pieces of it that just don’t seem to make a bit of sense, but as the movie progresses, all the pieces clash together in a twisted puzzle that I enjoyed figuring it out. Probably the most memorable character in this entire movie is Brittany Murphy who plays the psychotic young girl with a horrible story to how she came to become that way. The villains were cool, it was great how they tapped the entire house and they could see Douglas and Janssen at every turn.
Famke Janssen plays Douglas’ wife who is bedridden with a broken leg. I thought she conveyed a sense of vulnerability when she couldn’t even get up from her bed to help save her daughter. I thought while this movie was cool, thought it tried too hard to be an original thriller amidst the contrived plot devices and twists. At many times it went to desperate measures to seem atmospheric and creepy. At some moments of the film I felt it tried to be a clone of “Ransom”, an excellent movie which can not be compared to this. All the performances seem so trite and artificial that it was actually painful to watch at times. All in all, this movie is not masterpiece but it’s a good watch for all.