I ‘RECUPERATI’ di ‘CelluloidPortraits’ - RECENSIONE - Dal 67. Festival del Cinema di Cannes - PREVIEW in ENGLISH by JUSTIN CHANG (www.variety.com)
Soggetto: Il film prende ispirazione da veri e tragici fatti di cronaca nera avvenuti in Canada.
Cast: Ryan Reynolds (Matthew) Scott Speedman (Jeffrey) Rosario Dawson (Nicole) Mireille Enos (Tina) Kevin Durand (Mika) Alexia Fast (Cass) Peyton Kennedy (Cass da giovane) Bruce Greenwood (Vince) Brendan Gall (Teddy) Aaron Poole (Mike) Jason Blicker (Sam) Aidan Shipley (Albert) Ian Matthews (Willy) Christine Horne (Vicky) William MacDonald (Frank)
Musica: Mychael Danna
Costumi: Debra Hanson
Scenografia: Phillip Barker
Fotografia: Paul Sarossy
Montaggio: Susan Shipton
Casting: John Buchan e Jason Knight
Scheda film aggiornata al:
11 Gennaio 2026
Sinossi:
In breve:
Sono passati ben otto anni dalla scomparsa della piccola Cassandra Lane (Alexia Fast), la figlia di Matthew (Ryan Reynolds) e Tina (Mireille Enos). La bambina, che all'epoca aveva solo dieci anni, si pensa sia stata portata via contro il proprio volere, mentre il padre l'aveva lasciata un momento da sola in macchina per andare a comprare del cibo prima di tornare a casa.
Dopo questo tragico evento, Tina inizia a incolpare il marito della scomparsa di Cassandra, incrinando così anche il loro rapporto coniugale. La situazione non fa che peggiorare, quando il detective Jeffrey Cornwall (Scott Speedman), appena riassegnato all'unità che monitora lo sfruttamento minorile sul web, crede che Matthew sia coinvolto nel rapimento della figlia, per poter pagare i propri debiti.
Matthew, sfiduciato nei confronti della polizia, decide di cercare Cassandra per conto proprio, contribuendo però così a peggiorare il suo rapporto con la moglie. Nel frattempo, Jeffrey, che sta controllando alcuni siti pedopornografici del dark web, trova un'immagine che crede possa essere una recente foto di Cassandra...
In dettaglio:
Presso le Cascate del Niagara, Ontario in Canada, il detective della omicidi Jeffrey Cornwall si presenta per un lavoro con Nicole Dunlop nell'Unità di Sfruttamento Infantile su Internet. Si ritrae disgustato vedendo le immagini legate a un caso aperto, ma Nicole gli consiglia che queste sono le immagini che dovrà vedere ogni giorno senza distogliere lo sguardo.
Nel frattempo, l'appaltatore locale Matthew Lane va a prendere sua figlia di 9 anni, Cassandra, dopo la sua pratica di pattinaggio artistico. Matthew si ferma a prendere la torta, lasciando Cassandra nel suo camion. Pochi minuti dopo, torna e la trova scomparsa. Segnala il rapimento alla stazione di polizia, dove Jeffrey e Nicole vengono assegnati al caso. Sono scettici riguardo alla sua storia, cosa che lo fa infuriare. La madre di Cassandra, Tina Lane, arriva e scoppia in furia verso Matthew.
Otto anni dopo, Matthew e Tina sono allontanati; lei lo incolpa per la scomparsa di Cassandra. Nicole e Jeffrey ora sono coinvolti romanticamente. Tina incontra regolarmente la polizia per discutere il loro caso, ma Matthew, originariamente sospettato, è diventato un vigilante nella ricerca di Cassandra.
Per tutto questo tempo Cassandra è stata tenuta prigioniera nella casa di una pornografa infantile di nome Mika, che ha installato telecamere remote nelle stanze d'albergo dove Tina lavora come camera. Anche se Mika lascia casa per lavorare e non è più sessualmente interessata alla Cassandra ormai adulta, la paura che possa far del male ai suoi genitori impedisce a Cassandra di fuggire o di cercare aiuto.
Jeffrey trova foto recenti di Cassandra online. Mika la fa raccontare storie davanti alla telecamera per attirare i bambini più piccoli. Nicole si finge una bambina, il che permette a lei e Jeffrey di catturare un molestatore di bambini di nome Willy, oltre a un gruppo di altri. Gli arresti hanno messo Nicole sotto i riflettori pubblici. Mika va a trovare Willy in prigione e lo esorta a non accettare accordi di cooperazione. Willy dice che obbedirà solo se qualcuno rapirà Nicole e la costringerà a rivelare ciò che nel suo passato potrebbe averla ispirata a cercare la protezione dei minori.
Cassandra inizia a chattare online con una giovane ragazza, cercando di convincerla a incontrarla. Quando Nicole arriva a casa, trova Jeffrey che usa sua nipote come esca per infiltrarsi nella comunità di pornografia infantile e spegne immediatamente la webcam. Mika riaccende segretamente la webcam per guardare il loro litigio e riconsidera l'offerta di Willy riguardo a Nicole.
Nicole partecipa a una cena in suo onore dove viene drogata e rapita da Vicky, una donna che lavora per Mika.
Mika rinchiude Nicole in un furgone e le dice di raccontare la sua storia al microfono.
Alla pista di pattinaggio, Vicky interroga l'ex compagno di pattinaggio di Cassandra, Albert, sulla loro storia, e lo pressa per ottenere dettagli su come sia stato colpito dalla scomparsa. Matthew sente questo e segue Vicky in un ristorante, dove origlia mentre Vicky ascolta una registrazione della sua conversazione con Albert per Mika. Matthew chiama Jeffrey con la loro posizione e piazza il suo telefono con GPS sul veicolo di Mika.
Matthew provoca il personale della tavola calda a chiamare la polizia facendo il disturbo. Affronta i rapitori per guadagnare più tempo e ruba il cellulare di Vicky. Lei e Mika inseguono Matthew con il loro veicolo, sparando al suo camion. Matthew scappa passando di nuovo davanti al diner, dove diverse auto della polizia hanno risposto alle chiamate precedenti del personale.
Jeffrey rintraccia il telefono di Matthew e trova la casa di Mika. Jeffrey viene colpito da Vicky, ma lei viene uccisa da un altro agente. Jeffrey poi ferisce mortalmente Mika, che muore durante l'interrogatorio per sapere dove si trova Nicole. La famiglia Lane si riunisce in commissariato, e poi Tina e Cassandra fanno visita a Jeffrey mentre si riprende in ospedale. La polizia finalmente trova e salva Nicole.
Cassandra pattina sulla sua vecchia pista di ghiaccio e sorride.
Storyline:
In Niagara Falls, Ontario, homicide detective Jeffrey Cornwall interviews for a job with Nicole Dunlop in the Internet Child Exploitation Unit. He recoils in disgust after seeing the images related to an open case, but Nicole advises him these are the types of images he will have to see every day and not look away from.
Meanwhile, local contractor Matthew Lane picks up his 9-year-old daughter, Cassandra, after her figure skating practice. Matthew stops to pick up pie, leaving Cassandra in his truck. Minutes later, he returns to find her missing. He reports the abduction to the police station, where Jeffrey and Nicole are assigned to the case. They are skeptical of his story, which infuriates him. Cassandra's mother, Tina Lane, arrives and breaks down in rage at Matthew.
Eight years later, Matthew and Tina are estranged; she blames him for Cassandra's disappearance. Nicole and Jeffrey are now romantically involved. Tina meets with the police regularly to discuss their case but Matthew, originally a suspect, has become a vigilante in the search for Cassandra.
This entire time Cassandra has been held captive in the home of a child pornographer named Mika, who has installed remote cameras in the hotel rooms where Tina works as a chambermaid. Although Mika leaves his house to work and is no longer sexually interested in the now-adult Cassandra, the fear that he will harm her parents keeps Cassandra from escaping or seeking help.
Jeffrey finds recent photos of Cassandra online. Mika makes her tell stories on camera to lure in younger children. Nicole poses as a child, which allows her and Jeffrey to catch a child molester named Willy, as well as a group of others. The arrests put Nicole in the public eye. Mika visits Willy in prison and urges him not to take any deals for cooperation. Willy says he will only comply if someone kidnaps Nicole and forces her to reveal what in her past may have inspired her to pursue child protection.
Cassandra begins chatting online with a young girl, trying to entice her to meet. When Nicole arrives home, she finds Jeffrey using his own niece as bait to infiltrate the child porn community and immediately shuts off the webcam. Mika secretly turns the webcam back on to watch their fight and reconsiders Willy's offer regarding Nicole.
Nicole attends a dinner held in her honor where she is drugged and kidnapped by Vicky, a woman working for Mika.
While transporting trees in his truck, Matthew stays overnight at a motel. He wakes to find the trees have been taken and left in a trail that ultimately leads him to a remote location where he finds Cassandra. Cassandra resists leaving with him and Matthew does not understand why until Mika appears and tranquilizes him; Mika had arranged the meeting to watch their reunion.
Mika locks Nicole in a van and tells her to tell her story in a microphone.
At the ice skating rink, Vicky questions Cassandra's former skating partner, Albert, about their history, pressuring him for details on how he was impacted by the disappearance. Matthew overhears this and follows Vicky to a restaurant, where he eavesdrops as Vicky plays a recording of her conversation with Albert for Mika. Matthew calls Jeffrey with their location and plants his GPS-enabled phone on Mika's vehicle.
Matthew goads the diner staff to call the police by being disruptive. He confronts the abductors to buy more time and steals Vicky's cell phone. She and Mika chase Matthew in their vehicle, shooting at his truck. Matthew escapes by driving by the diner again, where multiple police cars have responded to the staff's earlier calls.
Jeffrey tracks Matthew's phone and locates Mika's house. Jeffrey is shot by Vicky, but she is killed by another officer. Jeffrey then fatally wounds Mika, who dies while being interrogated for Nicole's location. The Lane family is reunited at the police station, and then Tina and Cassandra visit Jeffrey as he recovers in the hospital. The police finally find and rescue Nicole.
In questa superficiale storia di rapimento di minore, e di tracciati pedo-pornografici, in cui, dopo otto anni di attesa, viene fatta breccia dal padre stesso - sempre alla ricerca della figlia scomparsa, alimentato dai sensi di colpa - l’unica nota
meno dolente è proprio il protagonismo di Ryan Reynolds, per quanto anch’egli ‘congelato’ in un personaggio più accademico che altamente emotivo, se si escludono certi particolari passaggi. Con il suo Matthew, attivo su un campo abbondantemente innevato, Reynolds riallinea su se stesso la generale sconnessione narrativa, dalla temperatura più che tiepida, condita con l’insopportabile e insolente ottusità di alcuni componenti della polizia.
Secondo commento critico (a cura di JUSTIN CHANG, www.variety.com)
THIS LUDICROUS ABDUCTION THRILLER PLAYS LIKE AN ILL-ADVISED ASSEMBLY OF TROPES AND THEMES FROM ATOM EGOYAN'S HIGHLIGHTS REEL.
Atom Egoyan¡¯s 14th feature tells a tale of lost children and grieving parents unfolding under wintry gray skies, but otherwise we¡¯re about as far removed from the mastery of ¡°The Sweet Hereafter¡± as we could be in ¡°The Captive,¡± a ludicrous abduction thriller that finds a once-great filmmaker slipping into previously unentered realms of self-parody. Attempting to meld his traditional preoccupations with guilt and bereavement, voyeuristic technology and achronological storytelling with a ¡°Law & Order: Special Victims Unit¡±-style procedural, Egoyan leaves a strong cast flailing to keep up with a contrived and fatally unconvincing drama that makes the recent ¡°Prisoners¡± look like a masterpiece in retrospect. News of the film¡¯s acquisition by U.S. distrib A24 broke shortly before its press screening at Cannes, where it was greeted with a smattering of boos;
beyond the Croisette, mass indifference rather than contempt seems the likely reaction.
It¡¯s neither pleasant nor surprising to report that Egoyan¡¯s new film is the latest in a string of clunkers, following 2009¡äs ¡°Chloe¡± and the just-released ¡°Devil¡¯s Knot.¡± But what makes the new film particularly dispiriting is the way it seems to deliberately engage with tropes, themes and images that loyal fans will recall from the filmmaker¡¯s career-defining work of nearly two decades ago (including his ¡¯90s masterpieces ¡°Exotica¡± and ¡°The Sweet Hereafter¡±), raising perhaps unreasonable early expectations that we might be seeing a throwback, and perhaps even a comeback, in the making.
Once again we are presented with an array of wounded characters whose tightly interconnected relationships are gradually revealed over the course of a narrative that occasionally shifts, without warning, into the distant past. At the core of the story is the kidnapping of 9-year-old Cass (Peyton Kennedy), who
vanished into thin air (quite literally, somewhere in the high-altitude reaches of northern Ontario) when her father, Matthew (Ryan Reynolds), left her in his pickup truck for five minutes to buy a pie. Matthew¡¯s wife, Tina (Mireille Enos), has never forgiven him for letting their daughter out of his sight. But as it¡¯s revealed soon enough, there¡¯s more to blame here than a father¡¯s momentary neglect, as Cass was being stalked all along by a frighteningly resourceful, tech-savvy pedophile ring.
Eight years on, the teenage Cass (Alexia Fast) is very much alive but not exactly well, sealed away in a vault-like bedroom by the creepy Mika (Kevin Durand, sporting a perv-alert mustache). It¡¯s characteristic of the film¡¯s tastefully tawdry approach that we never fully grasp the nature of the relationship between captor and captive, although we can infer that it includes past sexual abuse and a measure of Stockholm syndrome, given
Cass¡¯ shrugging acceptance of her fate. If anything, Mika seems to really get off on exploiting the grief of her parents, his state-of-the-art network of computers and hidden cameras allowing him to spy on (and even manipulate) Tina in the hotel rooms where she works as a housekeeper.
As if that weren¡¯t tangled enough, the film also gives us Scott Speedman and Rosario Dawson as a pair of detectives (and lovers) who investigate crimes against children, and whose own personal traumas have led them to adopt peculiar, not always professional approaches to the job. While the tough but compassionate Nicole (Dawson) meets with Tina for regular one-on-one counseling sessions, the more volatile Jeffrey (Speedman) suspects Matthew of having sold his own daughter into child slavery, mainly because he reminds Jeffrey of ¡°somebody from my past.¡± ¡°This is the present!¡± snaps Nicole, in one of the more groan-worthy lines in Egoyan and
David Fraser¡¯s laboriously transparent script.
The production features a typically high level of craftsmanship by the director¡¯s regular collaborators, with a strong contribution by d.p. Paul Sarossy (beautifully capturing the region¡¯s desolate snowy vistas in widescreen) and an obtrusively droning score by Mychael Danna. Performance-wise, Reynolds and Enos come off the most sympathetic here, realizing a handful of affecting moments as desperate parents whose marriage has been brought low by their own sense of guilt and impotent rage. Dawson and Speedman don¡¯t fare as well, saddled as they are with backstories that seem to trail off just as they¡¯re about to reveal something interesting, and they¡¯re particularly ill served by perhaps the script¡¯s most misguided development, in which Mika and his all-seeing, all-knowing network of kidnappers set their eyes on Nicole.
The implications of watching another individual ¡ª a long-standing Egoyan obsession from films including ¡°The Adjuster,¡± ¡°Exotica¡± and his last promising
effort, 2008¡äs ¡°Adoration¡± ¡ª are duly addressed here. One intriguing scene shows Nicole, Jeffrey and their fellow officers attempting to find potential pederasts online, masquerading as young kids and at one point even using a childhood photo of Nicole as (jail)bait. At another point, Jeffrey even tries to set a trap using his own niece (Ella Ballentine), who seems to exist for just this narrative purpose ¡ª a twisted development that a smarter film might have woven into a subtle statement about the potential pitfalls of pursuing justice at any cost, and the intimate ways in which victims, villains and rescuers are bound together in the wake of a festering tragedy.
Indeed, ¡°The Captive¡± always seems to be clearing its throat in preparation for just such a statement, but it¡¯s hamstrung at every moment by its inability to reconcile its creaky B-thriller trappings with its artier inclinations. It¡¯s not just that
Egoyan can¡¯t seem to decide what kind of film he wanted to make, but that the two options have effectively canceled each other out. The deftness with which the helmer manipulated time in his earlier pics eludes him in this generic procedural context (not aided by the fact that no one here seems to age in the slightest over the course of eight years), leaving us with obfuscation but no genuine sense of mystery.
Similarly, the decision to divide the film¡¯s narrative focus evenly across the ensemble, as if to allow these characters to emerge in all their painful dimensions (well, except Mika, whose most painful dimension is his attempt to sing an aria from ¡°The Magic Flute¡±), merely has the effect of diluting the suspense and exposing the characters for the painfully thin constructs that they are. Everyone here, it predictably emerges, is a captive to something ¡ª to anger,
to shame, to their own unspeakable compulsions ¡ª but by movie¡¯s end, it¡¯s only Egoyan¡¯s undeniable filmmaking talent that still feels held hostage.
