An egregious piece of commercial trash, uninspired and soulless.
Leelee Sobieski is a 16-year-old whose wealthy parents were just killed in a traffic "accident." She and her younger brother are handed over to the only guardians available -- Stellan Skarsgard and his wife Diane Lane. But mischief is afoot. The guardians owe an enormous amount of money to the mob and intend to cheat Sobieksi and her brother out of the four million bucks in the trust fund. They'll kill the kids if necessary. After all, it turns out, they engineered the parents' car so as to disable it, disposing of the parents and leaving the two kids as helpless orphans. Something like that.
Leelee Sobieski, I kind of like. Her acting talents may be modest but at least they exist. And her features are memorable -- those plump cheeks, that tiny mouth whose upper lip is chevron shaped, and those startling blue Tartar eyes. She reminds me of Dee Dee Myers, the former adviser to President Clinton. Dee Dee, Leelee. Might they not be one and the same person? True, I am nervous. Very, very nervous, but why WILL you call me mad? Let me put it this way. Have you ever seen the two of them in the same room at the same time? I thought not. Stellan Skarsgard is always dependable, and sometimes more than that. The other performers fade into the woodwork.
It's the plot that sinks this attempt at a chiller. There isn't a single instant that doesn't make a viewer feel that, somewhere, some time, he's seen this before. (And he has.) It incorporates every cliché in the formula.
I'll give just one example. Skarsgard is making a private, incriminating phone call late at night in his Malibu mansion. Sobieski is downstairs in the kitchen. She picks up the second phone and pushes "Listen." She accidentally makes a slight noise. Skarsgard hears it and begins to creep suspiciously toward the kitchen, but Sobieski doesn't know he's heard. Closer and closer. Cross-cutting between the scowling Skarsgard with the phone to his ear and the unsuspecting wide-eyed Sobieski behind the kitchen door. Skarsgard reaches the door. Sobieski yanks her head around. Skarsgard flings the door open. No Sobieski. She's darted away just in time.
This sort of thing goes on and on. In the climactic auto chase, Skarsgard rams through a wall and his Jaguar rolls down a cliff and smashes to pieces.
I glanced gratefully heavenward -- at least they'd managed to avoid the ritual of the corpse leaping back to life. But, no. While Sobieski and her brother sit alone in their silent car on the highway, the shockingly bloodied Skarsgard staggers through the hole in the wall with the intent of killing the two children. You know what I want to be when I grow up? One of the heavies in a horror movie. They never die. They take a beating but keep on ticking.
If you've never seen a movie before -- if you've never HEARD of movies -- you'll probably find this one engaging.
Leelee Sobieski is a 16-year-old whose wealthy parents were just killed in a traffic "accident." She and her younger brother are handed over to the only guardians available -- Stellan Skarsgard and his wife Diane Lane. But mischief is afoot. The guardians owe an enormous amount of money to the mob and intend to cheat Sobieksi and her brother out of the four million bucks in the trust fund. They'll kill the kids if necessary. After all, it turns out, they engineered the parents' car so as to disable it, disposing of the parents and leaving the two kids as helpless orphans. Something like that.
Leelee Sobieski, I kind of like. Her acting talents may be modest but at least they exist. And her features are memorable -- those plump cheeks, that tiny mouth whose upper lip is chevron shaped, and those startling blue Tartar eyes. She reminds me of Dee Dee Myers, the former adviser to President Clinton. Dee Dee, Leelee. Might they not be one and the same person? True, I am nervous. Very, very nervous, but why WILL you call me mad? Let me put it this way. Have you ever seen the two of them in the same room at the same time? I thought not. Stellan Skarsgard is always dependable, and sometimes more than that. The other performers fade into the woodwork.
It's the plot that sinks this attempt at a chiller. There isn't a single instant that doesn't make a viewer feel that, somewhere, some time, he's seen this before. (And he has.) It incorporates every cliché in the formula.
I'll give just one example. Skarsgard is making a private, incriminating phone call late at night in his Malibu mansion. Sobieski is downstairs in the kitchen. She picks up the second phone and pushes "Listen." She accidentally makes a slight noise. Skarsgard hears it and begins to creep suspiciously toward the kitchen, but Sobieski doesn't know he's heard. Closer and closer. Cross-cutting between the scowling Skarsgard with the phone to his ear and the unsuspecting wide-eyed Sobieski behind the kitchen door. Skarsgard reaches the door. Sobieski yanks her head around. Skarsgard flings the door open. No Sobieski. She's darted away just in time.
This sort of thing goes on and on. In the climactic auto chase, Skarsgard rams through a wall and his Jaguar rolls down a cliff and smashes to pieces.
I glanced gratefully heavenward -- at least they'd managed to avoid the ritual of the corpse leaping back to life. But, no. While Sobieski and her brother sit alone in their silent car on the highway, the shockingly bloodied Skarsgard staggers through the hole in the wall with the intent of killing the two children. You know what I want to be when I grow up? One of the heavies in a horror movie. They never die. They take a beating but keep on ticking.
If you've never seen a movie before -- if you've never HEARD of movies -- you'll probably find this one engaging.