A once-admired director hits the skids with this gross, implausible thriller, writes Michael Dwyer
WHATEVER happened to Roland Joffe? More than likely, you are past caring. In 1984, having cut his teeth on quality British TV drama, Joffe made his cinema debut with The Killing Fields, set in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge regime. It demonstrated his interest in expansive, issues-driven scenarios and earned him an Oscar nomination, as did The Mission, set in 18th-century South America, which took the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1986.
Joffe's next big, important theme was the creation of the first atomic bomb in the muddled Fat Man and Little Boy. The downward curve continued with City of Joy, starring Patrick Swayze as a US doctor searching his soul amidst the poverty of Calcutta; The Scarlet Letter, a misguided star vehicle for Demi Moore; the slight comedy Goodbye Lover; and the dull, bloated French period yarn, Vatel, which understandably was not released here.
Captivity, his first film in seven years, marks the nadir in Joffe's career as he slums it in the gory horror genre. The film achieved some useful notoriety when objections to its lurid US poster campaign in public places resulted in a sanction from the Motion Picture Association of America and delayed its release there until next month.
The grotesque prologue of Captivity illustrates the villain's sadistic modus operandi, as he prepares a victim for a ghastly fate. His next target is supermodel Jennifer Tree, blankly played by Elisha Cuthbert, someone well accustomed to women-in-peril roles as the incredibly disaster- prone daughter of Kiefer Sutherland in 24.
Jennifer is so famous that her picture stares out from magazine covers and billboards across Manhattan. Given that super- models surround themselves with protective entourages, it is highly implausible that Jennifer attends a nightclub charity event accompanied only by her little dog, Suzy.
This, of course, makes it all the easier for the villain, Ben (Pruitt Taylor Vince), to spike Jennifer's drink. When she wakes up next day she finds herself imprisoned in his dungeon. Ben is no fashion victim, dressing his bulky frame very badly indeed, but he clearly can afford to install banks of elaborate technology in his high-security basement torture chamber.
He gives Jennifer a preview of what's in store when he compels her to watch a vile video of an earlier victim whose face is covered in acid. The movie turns even more repulsive when Ben prepares a cocktail for Jennifer, who watches aghast as he drops eyes and ears into a blender and forces her to drink the liquefied contents.
Given that Ben mostly grunts, there is virtually no dialogue in the first section of the film apart from Jennifer's vain pleas for mercy. In the manner of Big Brother, the screenplay eventually introduces another character (Daniel Gillies) - the boy next door, so to speak - whose presence as a fellow prisoner gives jittery Jennifer a ray of hope.
The few characters are so thinly drawn that it's impossible to care a whit for any of them. And despite its parade of disgusting imagery, Captivity is, above all, boring. There is ample time to ponder how Jennifer manages to keep her make-up so freshly applied throughout her trauma.
The consequences are utterly predictable and formulaic, complete with the hoary cliche of the killer who has not been killed after all, and laced with some trite Oedipal psychology. The only vaguely interesting aspect of sitting through this rubbish in its entirety was the information in the closing credits that it was shot in a Moscow studio.
