Kidnap (2017 film)

Kidnap is a 2017 American action-thriller film directed by Luis Prieto and written by Knate Lee. It stars Halle Berry as a working mother who pursues two child trafficking abductors (Chris McGinn and Lew Temple) after they kidnap her six-year-old son (Sage Correa). Produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura through Di Bonaventura Pictures, the feature was created on an estimated budget of $21 million.
The project was announced at the 67th Cannes Film Festival, with Relativity Media acquiring the rights to the film in September 2014. Shot with cinematographer Flavio Labiano using practical effects in New Orleans and Slidell, Louisiana, filming concluded after a period of three months. During post-production, the film score was composed by Federico Jusid.
In July 2015, Relativity filed for bankruptcy and the film was delayed several times before being put on hiatus. Two years later, in May 2017, the newly-founded Aviron Pictures obtained the rights to the feature. As a result, "Kidnap" premiered at the ArcLight Hollywood multiplex on July 31, 2017, and was theatrically released on August 4. Upon its release, the film received mixed reviews, with praise for Berry's acting but criticism for the screenplay, direction, and overall plot. For her performance, Berry earned a nomination at the 49th NAACP Image Awards for Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture.
Plot.
Diner waitress and single mother Karla Dyson takes her six-year-old son, Frankie, to a carnival. Once there, Karla leaves her son to take a phone call and hears from her lawyer new information about her current custody battle with her estranged husband. She returns and finds that Frankie is missing and that he left his toy voice recorder behind. Frantically searching for him, Karla spots a woman dragging Frankie into a green Ford Mustang with no license plate driven by a man. As it takes off, Karla tries to stop the car by clinging onto it and drops her phone after failing to do so. Karla then jumps into her minivan and races after the kidnappers.
On a highway, Karla attempts to attract the attention of a motorist. However, her efforts are foiled when the kidnappers throw a tire into the open traffic and cause a pile-up. After the abductors threaten to murder Frankie with a knife, Karla is forced to take an exit ramp before resuming her pursuit.
Karla hears a voice from her son's toy voice recorder, revealing the female abductor's name to be Margo. Spotting a police motorcycle, Karla successfully gains the officer's attention by swaying her car side to side. While the cop orders her to pull over, Karla tries to tell him that her son has been kidnapped, to no avail. The kidnappers notice and ram their car into the motorcycle, killing the officer, before both cars abruptly stop in a field.
After Karla confronts the male driver with no response, Margo approaches her vehicle. Demanding a ransom payment of $10,000 in exchange for Karla's son, Margo enters the minivan and tells Karla to follow her accomplice's car. In a tunnel, Margo attacks Karla, who fights back and manages to throw Margo out of the car. Noticing this, the male driver forces Karla to stop tailing him by threatening to drop Frankie onto the highway. After several minutes, Karla spots a traffic jam and finds the Mustang abandoned after having caused a collision; a passerby tells Karla that the pair left on foot.
Karla stops at a police station to report the incident and spots a wall filled with missing posters from the past decade. Fearing that her son will disappear for good if she waits, she promptly leaves. Soon after, she spots the male driver using a stolen black Volvo V70 and chases him until her vehicle runs out of fuel. Attempting to hitch a ride from a fellow motorist, the pair are blindsided when the Volvo rams their vehicle without warning, killing the driver and knocking Karla unconscious.
Waking up, Karla discovers that her son is no longer in the Volvo. As the kidnapper emerges from his car with a sawed-off shotgun, she puts her car into reverse, resulting in the man being fatally struck by a tree. Reading his ID and finding out that his name was Terrence Vickey, Karla decides to travel to his address.
At the Vickey's house, Karla calls 911 and eventually locates Frankie in a barn with two other kidnapped girls. Promising to come back, Karla and her son run away before being spotted by a distressed Margo with a shotgun, who has learned of her husband's death. As the pair hide underwater, Margo and her dog locate them. Karla pulls Margo underwater, who wildly fires and kills the dog, and drowns her.
At the barn, Karla is confronted by a man who claims to be Margo's neighbor. Karla realizes that he is actually participating in the kidnapping ring since he knows how many children were hiding without her telling him. She then knocks him out with a shovel before he can draw his gun. After the police arrive and the children are rescued, it is announced that the events resulted in the dissolution of an international child abduction ring, with Karla being praised as a hero.
Production.
Development.
"Kidnap" was officially announced on May 15, 2014, at the 67th Cannes Film Festival. At the event, it was reported that Luis Prieto would direct the project from a screenplay written by Knate Lee with Halle Berry attached to star, and with Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Erik Howsam producing through the production company Di Bonaventura Pictures. At the 39th Toronto International Film Festival in September 2014, Relativity Media acquired the rights to the project, despite the film not appearing at the festival, with production scheduled to begin later that year. Sage Correa, Chris McGinn, and Lew Temple were added to the cast in October 2014.
Berry spoke on "The Jess Cagle Interview" and said that she wanted to see a film where a regular working mother was the protagonist doing everything possible to save her child, describing a moment when she lost her daughter Nahla at the supermarket. With "Variety", Berry further explained that she joined the cast "because I'm a mom, and it's scary. I love seeing a woman, and a woman of color, get to save the day. Men save the day all the time in movies and it's nice to see a woman do what I know women can do."
Filming.
The same month filming began, Well Go USA and Rumble Entertainment revealed that they would also produce and finance the project alongside Lotus Entertainment, Di Bonaventura Pictures, 606 Films, and Gold Star Films. Principal photography for "Kidnap" began soon after on October 27, 2014. Shot with cinematographer Flavio Labiano in New Orleans and Slidell, Louisiana, filming concluded on December 7, 2014. In shooting the action sequences, Prieto said he watched several films from the 1980s that made him realize that "today, everything that is an action scene [...] they shoot it with green screen in a studio." As a result, he was inspired to complete the film with practical effects instead of CGI to have the actors react to "real things that are happening around [them], like cars coming full speed and crashing two meters away." Notable filming locations included the New Orleans City Park, the Huey P. Long Bridge, the Crescent City Connection, Interstate 310, I-10, and the Highway 11 bridge in Slidell.
Music.
In June 2015, it was announced that Federico Jusid would be composing the film score for "Kidnap". Two years later, on August 11, 2017, the score was released as Kidnap (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) via digital distribution.
Release.
Theatrical.
In September 2014, Relativity Media gave the film a release date for October 5, 2015. However, in July 2015, the distributor began facing a financial crisis where they were $320 million in debt, and the release date for "Kidnap" was moved to February 26, 2016. After Relativity filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, while still owing the feature itself $15 million, "Kidnap" was put on hiatus, to the dismay of several producers. In December 2015, the company vowed to release the film the following year, setting it for May 13 before postponing it to December 2. In November 2016, Relativity removed "Kidnap" from its schedule altogether, but after several positive test screenings, the company scheduled the film for March 10, 2017, while also trying to sell the film to potential distributors. In May 2017, Aviron Pictures was founded and bought the rights to the project. On July 31, 2017, "Kidnap" premiered at the ArcLight Hollywood multiplex, before being theatrically released in the United States and Canada on August 4, 2017.
Home media.
"Kidnap" was released on Digital HD via digital distribution through Amazon Video and iTunes on October 17, 2017, before receiving its physical release on DVD and Blu-ray on October 31. In its first week, the film sold 47,629 DVDs and 33,521 Blu-rays as the sixth-most sold feature on both formats in the United States. The following week, the feature sold 16,706 DVDs and 13,060 Blu-rays, moving down the charts to tenth and twelfth place, respectively. In December 2017, "Home Media Magazine" revealed that on its "rental chart", the film had moved to first place after becoming available on Redbox. Overall, "Kidnap" made $3.9 million through home media releases.
Reception.
Box office.
"Kidnap" grossed $31 million in the United States and Canada, and $3.8 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $34.8 million against a production budget of $21 million.
Before its release, film analytics predicted that the film would make $8 million in its opening weekend. Released alongside "The Dark Tower" on August 4, 2017, in 2,378 theaters, "Kidnap" made $3.7 million on its Friday opening day (including $500,000 through Thursday-night previews), and a $10 million total across its three-day opening weekend, placing fifth at the box office. In its second week, $4.53 million were spent on television advertisements, and the film grossed $5 million, finishing eighth. After being in release for three months under Aviron Pictures, "Kidnap" was removed from theaters in the United States and Canada after a total of 105 days.
Critical response.
 The website's critical consensus reads, ""Kidnap" strays into poorly scripted exploitation too often to take advantage of its pulpy premise – or the still-impressive talents of its committed star." Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrak reported 74% of audience members gave it a positive score, with 53% saying they would definitely recommend it.
Glenn Kenny, writing for "RogerEbert.com", gave the feature half a star out of four, called it "garbage", and gave negative remarks to the screenplay, overall plot, and the main character's tendency to talk to herself throughout the entire film. David Ehrlich from "IndieWire" gave it a "D-" along with a similar response where he also criticized the directing, writing that Luis Prieto "never demonstrates the interest to allow his heroine to take things into her own hands, but the movie does gain momentum as it chugs along."
Writing for the "Chicago Tribune", Michael Phillips gave "Kidnap" two stars out of five, and said that the film did not do everything possible to take advantage of its "own monstrously exploitative premise" and instead focused on making it realistic. The "Chicago Sun-Times" Richard Roeper also gave the same rating and criticized the runtime, screenplay, characters, cinematography, and repetitive closeups, while also giving praise to Halle Berry's performance. From "Time Out", Michael Gingold gave a three stars out of five mixed review, where they said the film was "more absurd than "Taken". In his three stars out of four review, Rex Reed from "The Observer" found the feature to be "another entry in the overcrowded, snatched-in-broad-daylight genre of abducted-children thrillers", but said that it had "no shortage of thrills".
Alonso Duralde from "TheWrap" summarized the entire film and Berry's performance by saying that it is a "cheesy little thriller, an unapologetic B-movie and a clear attempt by Oscar-winner Halle Berry at having a "Taken" of her very own." From "The New York Times", Teo Bugbee gave "Kidnap" a positive review, writing that it "doesn't waste time trying to build an arc to Karla's desperation" and found that Berry "approaches the task of playing this unhinged mother on the run with sincerity [...] her adrenaline kicks in the moment she sees Frankie being shoved into the back seat of an unfamiliar Mustang, and it doesn't dip until the credits roll."
Accolades.
In June 2018, "Kidnap" was awarded The ReFrame Stamp for its representation of women. At the annual Taurus World Stunt Awards, Taryn Terrell received a nomination for Best Overall Stunt by a Stuntwoman and won for Hardest Hit. In July 2018, Brice Fisher was nominated at the 39th Young Artist Awards for Best Performance in a Feature Film – Supporting Teen Actor. At the 49th NAACP Image Awards, Berry earned a nomination for Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture.