Print

Mail

wiki links

Held captive to torture-porn zeitgeist

Roland Joffe finds new depths in Captivity. PHOTO: COURTESY OF CMC

In his heyday Roland Joffe was an Oscar-nominated director feted for films like The Mission and The Killing Fields.

Today he is the helmsman of Captivity, a stupid, sexually exploitative slice of post-Saw sleaze which hit US headlines thanks to a leery ad campaign promoting the "Abduction," "Confinement," "Torture," and "Termination" of its glamorous young star.

What the hell happened?

Presumably, after a string of clunkers such as The Scarlet Letter and Goodbye Lover, Joffe couldn't afford to turn down this grotty Russian-American co-production, in which a "heartless" model (Elisha Cuthbert) is kidnapped, imprisoned and forced to dress up in short skirts and stilettos by a madman who pumps liquidized eyeballs into her gagging mouth because of some residual problems with his mother.

"Captivity is both a thriller and a love story," offers Joffe gamely in his Director's Vision statement, which goes on to use words such as "erotic" and "sensual" to describe this dreary misogynist claptrap.

Film notes Captivity Directed By: Roland Joffe Starring: Elisha Cuthbert (Jennifer), Daniel Gillies (Gary), Pruitt Taylor Vince (Ben), Laz Alonso (Disantos), Michael Harney (Bettiger), Rebekah Ryan (Mother) Running Time: 85 Minutes Taiwan Release: Today

Admittedly, the finished film bears little resemblance to the Larry Cohen-scripted first cut, which was shot in Moscow in 2005 (and indeed screened at the Sitges Film Festival in 2006) before its American distributors demanded substantial gory re-shoots to cash in on the so-called "torture porn" zeitgeist.

The result is a genuinely loathsome car-crash of a movie, a misshapen, ill-wrought work of vulgar opportunism of which all involved should be deeply ashamed.

This story has been viewed 1471 times.