Leofwine_draca CAPTIVE is a rather boring low budget thriller that fails to offer up much in the way of thrills or depth, despite having a startling opening sequence depicting a violent jail break. It's essentially a two hander between Kate Mara and David Oyelowo, the latter of whom plays an escaped rapist who ends up in Mara's home and takes her hostage. All good so far, but then the film turns into a lengthy, rambling sermon that seems to have been designed to advertise The Purpose-Driven Life, one of those Christian self-help books. As such, it feels more than a little preachy, as well as dull.

Samantha Haxton This is my first IMDb review, even though I am an avid movie watcher and use IMDb quite frequently to make rental selections. I don't feel the low or mediocre rating assigned by many reviewers is fair. This movie is not really an action film, and it is a true story about a woman who is a drug addict and grows closer to God due to her frightful experience being held captive. Her captor does display compassion and has moments where he is likable, even though he is a murderer. Some may criticize this, but most criminals are not 100% bad people. This is a story of two people, a drug addict and a murderer, who may be leading horrible lives but they do have redeeming qualities. I believe it is a great movie, and I don't think you need to be a Christian to enjoy it.

jimbo-53-186511 Recovering meth-addict and single mother Ashley Smith (Kate Mara) finds herself in a perilous life or death situation when she is taken hostage in her own home by escaped and wanted felon Brian Nichols (David Oyelowo). Based on a true story, Captive follows Ashley over a 7 hour period highlighting her attempts to survive this terrifying ordeal.In some ways I actually admire this film as it does at least try to avoid many of the clichés that plague home-invasion thrillers (perhaps being based on a true story may be the reason that it partly succeeds in this respect). Rather than being a ridiculous film that shows the victim trying to escape in increasingly preposterous and unlikely ways the narrative here has a much more slow-burning approach to it - essentially it shows the victim and the captor conversing and as things progress it turns out that they actually both share some common ground. For someone like me (who's unfamiliar with the real life case) this did make the film interesting and at the very least made it watchable. Whilst I'm happy to commend the filmmakers for employing this approach it does sadly come at the expense of any real excitement, tension or suspense. I appreciate that this is based on a true story and that perhaps what we're presented with here may well be an 'accurate' portrayal of actual events, but in reality having very little going on outside of the rather incisive narrative does mean that the film starts to drag and feel boring.The performances from Mara and Oyelowo are both very good (with the latter being excellent) and the generally non clichéd approach to the material mean that it is nowhere near as ridiculous or far-fetched as other films in the genre (the only ridiculous part to this film lay with Nichols escape, but this was a minor problem which I feel can just about be tolerated in the name of 'suspension of disbelief').Captive is the sort of film that I would say is worth a look (if nothing else due to the fact that it's based on a true story). The narrative is interesting enough to make it watchable and the performances are good, but it really needed more in the way of excitement, tension and suspense and the absence of these things is what lets it down slightly.

kailomonkey On reading the synopsis I wasn't sure how they were going to pull off a movie about a captive converting a convict. Based on a true story it seems they pulled it off by mostly skimming it and delivering a fairly straight criminal/hostage movie.To me it is sad that this is a true story because once it was done it went to Oprah and the facts, and I didn't see the black male convict being interviewed and celebrated. In fact the purpose driven life he gained was to in fact not see his son until he becomes 18 and chooses to do so. If it were a fiction I would have liked to see the captive fighting to make sure that man saw his son, or at least shown that the mother of his son then made contact and facilitated communication and a relationship between father and son.Without this information the story is a sad one, which would be fine, but it is framed as good for everyone despite the obvious. He even gives her her phone, a clear sign of relenting himself to the authorities, yet he doesn't give himself up. Was this confused storytelling or did he intend to give up but got scared again? We don't know because it's not even hinted at.I love the idea of this movie but what it delivers is trash mixed with troubling truths.