The makers of this queasy and mostly nauseating piece of torture-porn have already had to withdraw their explicit billboards in the US under pressure from feminist campaigners - for whom four cheers, five cheers, six cheers are not enough. The film itself is a very sorry and unthrilling piece of nastiness, peddling some pretty crass nonsense about what it imagines to be female psychology. The heroine is a model-actress-whatever called Jennifer (Elisha Cuthbert) who orders an apple martini at a smart Manhattan club, feels a bit woozy, and wakes up tied down in an unspeakable dungeon in which unspeakable things have been lined up for her by some wacko. But there's a twist. The wacko has imprisoned a pretty boy too, Gary (Daniel Gillies) and, against the odds ... well, boy meets girl in the torture dungeon and the old chemistry starts a-fizzin'.

More about Captivity

Captivity


* (Cert 18)

Friday June 22, 2007
The Guardian

Elisha Cuthbert in Captivity
Nauseating... Captivity, which stars Elisha Cuthbert.


The makers of this queasy and mostly nauseating piece of torture-porn have already had to withdraw their explicit billboards in the US under pressure from feminist campaigners - for whom four cheers, five cheers, six cheers are not enough. The film itself is a very sorry and unthrilling piece of nastiness, peddling some pretty crass nonsense about what it imagines to be female psychology. The heroine is a model-actress-whatever called Jennifer (Elisha Cuthbert) who orders an apple martini at a smart Manhattan club, feels a bit woozy, and wakes up tied down in an unspeakable dungeon in which unspeakable things have been lined up for her by some wacko. But there's a twist. The wacko has imprisoned a pretty boy too, Gary (Daniel Gillies) and, against the odds ... well, boy meets girl in the torture dungeon and the old chemistry starts a-fizzin'.

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It could have been the basis for a bizarre black comedy, were it not for the chillingly misjudged porn-seriousness of everything on offer. It asks us to believe that Jennifer would want to have sex under these conditions, and furthermore asks us to believe that she would still look like a total hottie. Even after being tortured. Unconsciously, the storyline participates in the madman's gruesomely naive fantasies. The extraordinary thing is that Roland Joffé is the director: the man who gave us The Killing Fields and The Mission, the man whose crucified Christ going over the waterfall became such an icon for 1980s cinema. The only thing going over the waterfall here seems to be Joffé's own career. Just a few years ago, he had the opening movie at the Cannes film festival, the 18th-century costume drama Vatel, starring Gérard Depardieu, and scripted by no less a person than Sir Tom Stoppard. Every cinema showing this one should have little bottles of Listerine on sale along with the nachos and popcorn to get rid of the dodgy taste.