A US senator's daughter is kidnapped from an upper crust school that caters to the rich and powerful. The kidnapper, a teacher at the school, executes a clever plan to sneak the student past the swarms of armed security and checkpoints, then begins a twisted game of cat and mouse with a detective (Morgan Freeman) with whom he has a fascination, contacting him directly to draw him into the case. The detective teams up with one of the secret service agents (Monica Potter) who worked at the school to try and solve the clues the kidnapper left behind and retrieve the little girl.
While it's not completely awful, this movie struggles at times. The problem is that the movie wants several "twists", surprise reveals ala Sixth Sense, and to get them it has characters behave in ways that strain suspension of disbelief. I can't talk directly about the twists without ruining major plot points, but suffice to say it seems doubtful that the characters could have the motivations they supposedly have without raising some kind of red flag well before the events of the film start.
Once you get past that the movie is a pretty standard crime drama, with the good guys hunting down the bad guys and engaging in big exciting gun battles and car chases until the movie arrives at its predictable outcome. Better movies that Freeman has been in actually manage to surprise in a meaningful way by concluding the story in ways that are genuinely unexpected and have consequences that stay with you after the movie ends. Not that every movie can or should end like Se7en, but a surprise in a film that has little actual impact other than to simply slide characters into new roles within a standard story framework has no long term impact because nothing new has actually happened; the players change but the game is the same.
In any case, the movie isn't terrible, it just isn't anything special. It's the kind of movie you watch on Netflix or whatever some rainy day when there's nothing else better to do and is a mildly entertaining diversion. More interesting than the story, for me anyway, is a glimpse back into life twenty years ago. Phone booths and pre-Windows 95 computers, now that's scary.
While it's not completely awful, this movie struggles at times. The problem is that the movie wants several "twists", surprise reveals ala Sixth Sense, and to get them it has characters behave in ways that strain suspension of disbelief. I can't talk directly about the twists without ruining major plot points, but suffice to say it seems doubtful that the characters could have the motivations they supposedly have without raising some kind of red flag well before the events of the film start.
Once you get past that the movie is a pretty standard crime drama, with the good guys hunting down the bad guys and engaging in big exciting gun battles and car chases until the movie arrives at its predictable outcome. Better movies that Freeman has been in actually manage to surprise in a meaningful way by concluding the story in ways that are genuinely unexpected and have consequences that stay with you after the movie ends. Not that every movie can or should end like Se7en, but a surprise in a film that has little actual impact other than to simply slide characters into new roles within a standard story framework has no long term impact because nothing new has actually happened; the players change but the game is the same.
In any case, the movie isn't terrible, it just isn't anything special. It's the kind of movie you watch on Netflix or whatever some rainy day when there's nothing else better to do and is a mildly entertaining diversion. More interesting than the story, for me anyway, is a glimpse back into life twenty years ago. Phone booths and pre-Windows 95 computers, now that's scary.