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The Captive

A lumbering misfire and waste of a strong cast

Offensively implausible, timeframe-jumping child abduction non-thriller tries to wed guilt and grief with a TV-level police procedural and some general weirdness, resulting in this contrived, unpleasant mess that was booed at Cannes.

It’s hard to believe that this lumbering misfire comes from Atom Egoyan, the once-brilliant director who gave us The Sweet Hereafter, Exotica, and Felicia’s Journey. The strong cast (Rosario Dawson, Ryan Reynolds, Scott Speedman, Mireille Enos) is pretty much wasted, and a particularly misguided subplot involving Dawson’s abduction is simply abandoned. Boo. Japanese title: Shiroi Chinmoku. (112 min)