Were Jack Webb handed a budget to take his sermonic L. A. cop-show "Dragnet" on the road, it might play something like "Secuestro Express." "This is the city, Caracas, Venezuela. Every sixty seconds a person is abducted in Latin America. 70% of them don't survive." The "Dumb-dee-dumb-dumb" that follows would make a suitable overture to the structural contrivances of writer-director Jonathan Jakubowicz's debut feature.
For a man who only cut at the end of sentences and photographed everything at eye-level, the glaucomic digital imagery, jarring freeze frames and Cuisinart edits would surely sicken Webb. He would be equally reviled by the lack of law and order on display. Yet even Sgt. Joe Friday would be envious of Jakubowicz's skill with a hammer. His thudding message picture centers on a trio of goons and the engaged couple they shanghai.
Carla (Mia Maestro) is a sultry socialite who justifies her poverty-free existence by volunteering at a hospital for underprivileged children. Her only sin is wearing a cocktail dress in "a starving city." Okay, she also enjoys a little pot and coke, which are exactly what she and boyfriend Martin (John Paul Leroux) are partaking in at the time of their abduction. Decades after Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" smokescreen and it's still near impossible for a character to fire up a joint without instantly being earmarked for doom.
Their captors (Carlos Julio Molina, Pedro Perez and Carlos Madera) cavort like the Bowery Boys on crank. Violent, upidstay, and badly dressed, these homophobic brutes are hard pressed to differentiate between HIV and H20. Their cartoony machismo, one pig seems genuinely impressed that his rape victim wears Victoria's Secret, does little more than pile on shock.
The films is not totally void of shading. A clever twist momentarily transforming the criminals into crime victims and a well-executed front seat/back seat use of horizontal split screen both stand out. Later, a stopover at gay coke dealer's place finds the pusher asking to exchange drugs for thirty-minutes between the sheets with Martin. The reveal, before Carla, that Martin and the dealer were past lovers came as a bona fide surprise. At least until questions concerning a group of hardcore criminals loco enough to drag bruised and bloody hostages along on a drug deal popped up.
Even with sub-titles and grainy, rough-edged frames this action drama runs closer in spirit to this year's Bruce Willis blockbuster "Hostage" than "City of God," its obvious blueprint. Box-office benediction will determine whether or not the time is right for Jakubowicz to slap a "Hollywood, U.S.A." sticker on his steamer trunk and book passage.
For a man who only cut at the end of sentences and photographed everything at eye-level, the glaucomic digital imagery, jarring freeze frames and Cuisinart edits would surely sicken Webb. He would be equally reviled by the lack of law and order on display. Yet even Sgt. Joe Friday would be envious of Jakubowicz's skill with a hammer. His thudding message picture centers on a trio of goons and the engaged couple they shanghai.
Carla (Mia Maestro) is a sultry socialite who justifies her poverty-free existence by volunteering at a hospital for underprivileged children. Her only sin is wearing a cocktail dress in "a starving city." Okay, she also enjoys a little pot and coke, which are exactly what she and boyfriend Martin (John Paul Leroux) are partaking in at the time of their abduction. Decades after Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" smokescreen and it's still near impossible for a character to fire up a joint without instantly being earmarked for doom.
Their captors (Carlos Julio Molina, Pedro Perez and Carlos Madera) cavort like the Bowery Boys on crank. Violent, upidstay, and badly dressed, these homophobic brutes are hard pressed to differentiate between HIV and H20. Their cartoony machismo, one pig seems genuinely impressed that his rape victim wears Victoria's Secret, does little more than pile on shock.
The films is not totally void of shading. A clever twist momentarily transforming the criminals into crime victims and a well-executed front seat/back seat use of horizontal split screen both stand out. Later, a stopover at gay coke dealer's place finds the pusher asking to exchange drugs for thirty-minutes between the sheets with Martin. The reveal, before Carla, that Martin and the dealer were past lovers came as a bona fide surprise. At least until questions concerning a group of hardcore criminals loco enough to drag bruised and bloody hostages along on a drug deal popped up.
Even with sub-titles and grainy, rough-edged frames this action drama runs closer in spirit to this year's Bruce Willis blockbuster "Hostage" than "City of God," its obvious blueprint. Box-office benediction will determine whether or not the time is right for Jakubowicz to slap a "Hollywood, U.S.A." sticker on his steamer trunk and book passage.