Movie Review: Ransom
Quick Review: Somewhat of a formula flick with a few interesting
ideas. Good acting, production value, directing; makes for a fun
night out. There's no question this is an entertaining movie. It's
hard to go wrong with the highest quality people in the movie
business making such a film. But...
Synopsis: Airline Mogul, Tom Mullen (Mel Gibson), is a tough businessman,
but when his son is kidnapped, he is forced to balance his emotions with
his better judgment about how to deal with the kidnapper. His strong
business background gives him the balls and the strength of his convictions to
play against the odds and confront the kidnapper. He does so, as properly
portayed in the previews, by using the ransom money as a reward for anyone
that turns him in instead.
Review: There's a lot of positives to this movie, including great acting,
directing and production value. The basic human theme of the movie is
Mel Gibson's torment; the events that lead him to reason that negotiation
with the kidnapper is futile are obvious, tho still well done. And
for this, the movie has a great premise. (Aside from the fact that the
first hour goes by before we get to this point, but that's ok.) The
plot is straightforward with few surprises. In fact, other than Mel
Gibon's character, most of the other characters are two dimensional. The
kidnapper really has no interesting motive, there are no odd relationships
going on, no controversial subplots or anything that makes us, the
viewers, torn between the options for dealing with the problem. It's just
plain, straightfoward, vengence...with a passion. It's too easy to know
what to do (and what *we'd* do), and that his course of action is the
only reasonable one, tough as it may be. Fine, but with such an obvious
resolution, we get annoyed at the other characters that disagree with him.
There is no bad dialog, no campy special effects or stunts, no stupid plot
twists, no dumb relationships, no contrived circumstances just to move the
plot along. If you want these, see a Jan de Bont movie (Twister or Speed).
But, I feel it's wrong to say that Ransom is a good movie simply because
it isn't a *bad* movie, but that's how I seem to be rating movies this
year. (How awful!) I guess my basic feeling is, Ransom is a reasonable
action/suspect/drama movie that could have (*should* have) been done by
Jan De Bont using lesser known actors who need to get out and show their
stuff, and using a much smaller budget. It shouldn't take this much
firepower to make this kind of movie. It's like the US invading Haiti -- it's
an overkill.
