Trapped review

Look on the bright side - at least Trapped should make that `Six Degrees Of Kevin Bacon' game easier. You know, the one where you try and connect any other star to the bone-faced Mr B in just half-a-dozen steps? With three main actors that our Kev has never worked with before, it's gotta shorten the trickier links. So let's thank the filmmakers for that, eh? If precious little else...

Bacon plays kidnapper Joe. Along with partners Marvin and Cheryl (Pruitt Taylor Vince and Courtney Love), he's hatched the perfect crime. His operations take 24 hours, during which Mom and Dad are held at separate locations, with their child at a third. If either of the grown-ups kick up a fuss, their partner and their child die. It is, as Joe quips, a machine fuelled by fear.

But this machine breaks down when they snatch the little girl (Dakota Fanning) of Will and Karen Jennings (Stuart Townsend and Charlize Theron). A standard Hollywood-issue perfect couple - he's a research-scientist doctor and she's a nurse-turned-interior decorator - they decide to break the rules. They decide to fight back.

If it held its nerve, Trapped might have edged into three-star thriller territory. As it is, Angel Eyes director Luis Mandoki drowns the good opening in a bucket of clichés. First comes a muddied back story, then a revenge sub-plot and, finally, a string of `tense' set-pieces that border on the absurd.

By the time Trapped stumbles to its ludicrous finalé, which seems to suggest it's fine to slaughter loads of innocent bystanders at random, you wish Joe had just shot the Jennings in the first reel. It would have saved a lot of time, effort and pain.