Krishna
Inspired by the Korean cult classic, this movie is different. It starts off very badly like a C grade movie. They want to depict Josh Doucette (Josh Brolin) as a devil may care playboy, hard smoking, hard drinking, skirt chasing, wife cheating bad man. Then one day, he gets kidnapped and wakes up in a prison cell with a creepy porter’s picture on the wall.
And the movie gets a lot more interesting after that. In fact initially, even the acting by Josh sucks and the dialogues suck more. Finally, after he wakes up, he starts seeing TV (and we with him, realize that many years have passed). He decides to quit smoking and bulk up. The television is his only mode of information. In it he sees everything – politics, cartoons, discussions, his daughter Mia growing up, his wife dying in a home invasion gone wrong; he watches Mia participate in competitions and win prizes and cries copiously. He gets food shoved through a hole in the door and his supplies given but never meets anyone. He is watched regularly through videos and when he turns unruly in the beginning, is gassed unconscious and subject to grooming against his will. He despairs of ever leaving and thinks he is going to die in that cell. So he starts pouring his heart out to his daughter Mia in a stack of letters that grow into a pile.
Then you get a shock. The man who is watching him is our own Samuel L Jackson. With a ridiculous looking blond Mohawk but really it is he! He is Chaney a gangster. But why is he holding Josh prisoner? What did Josh do to him? At this point there is no clue.
The movie really takes off now and you are dying of curiosity to find out who did this to him and why. He finally figures out a way to escape and even makes his escape through the roof but is captured and brought back. No punishment, nothing. Back in the room, with the escape avenue closed, and with no human contact except the TV again. He struggles to keep his sanity.
When twenty years is past, he is suddenly freed. As mysteriously as he was taken, he is let out. He is gassed and when he comes to, he finds himself on the streets, a free man. He vows to find who held him prisoner, and decides to find out. He is obsessed with finding out who did this to him. He is left with the stack of letters he wrote to Mia, and also a cell phone with his daughter’s picture and, ominously, a count down. He is desperate to find her.
He meets Marie (Elizabeth Olsen) who tries to help him. By sheer perseverance and some interesting detective work involving Chinese food, he manages to track down Chaney and tortures him, only to find that Chaney is a thug for hire and has a lot of people held prisoner in the facility where he was, for money. Before he can learn the identity of kidnapper, he is overwhelmed by Chaney’s bodyguards who manage to enter and gets badly beaten up and loses consciousness. He is mysteriously restored back to the place where he stays when he comes to.
Chaney finds him and now kidnaps both him and Marie, and they try to rape her and torture him when a phone call comes from someone named Adrian. Adrian asks that Chaney let them go and pays a ton of money to Chaney. You wonder why and the puzzle deepens.
How it all unravels and how you find out why he was kept a prisoner and why he was released is the rest of the story. A brilliant twist at the end makes you gasp. It is very unexpected.
There are a few things I found in the movie that I did not like at all. First, the acting, especially in the beginning, sucks. The first few scenes even feel amateurish. It gets better and better if you have the patience to continue watching. Second, the whole plot is explained away fairly satisfactorily at the end, and you can buy that line of argument as logical. Not realistic, mind you, but at least plausible, given this is a Hollywood movie. How it ends is also very good. But it is all told suddenly at the end. No clues from the beginning, nothing to indicate what it could even be, but suddenly everything is sprung on you.
There are even childish scenes such as “If you can figure out why I did this to you within seven (was it?) days, I will pay you a fortune and kill myself in front of you” offer to him by the man responsible for it all. What?
But for all that, a very entertaining movie, and a very satisfying watch at the end.
I will award it a 7/10
– – Krishna