waywaytoofast Mr. "The Gryphon"This was a scream for help by a student who found a way to get the matter heard, not a Ron Howard production. I was a student there before they moved into the new facility. Things were worse in the old place. I was abused in ways that would shock you. Criticizing the production while leaving the abuse to continue is disgusting. How classically "preppy" can you be? Kids are suffering and you want to sit in your comfortable world and pretend to be a film critic? The things that happened to me there are never far from my mind though that was almost 35 years ago now. Your concentration on the production over the message offends me. Why do you think the school is in the DR and not somewhere in the US? It is ONLY because they can escape US laws in how they treat folks. I slipped an unread and un-filtered letter to my parents during the hurricane David situation and they got me out of there - narrowly avoiding a serious confrontation with a young "officer" bent on being a Richard. Solitary confinement, physical abuse, perpetual mental abuse - it all happened and is surely still occurring. Those that lived through this could tell you stories that would make you weep.

The Gryphon I guess I'm a purist. Being 56 years old and a lifelong cinephile, with a penchant for documentaries, I bemoan the fact that many documentarians of late have lost their ability to be unbiased observers. Nothing was more disturbing in this movie than the scene in which David hands director Kate Logan a note to be passed to his friends outside the Dominican Republic. Once a documentary becomes biased it loses all moral ground. In 1992, in the comedy/drama movie called "Man Bites Dog" about a film crew following a "heartless killer" as he commits his crimes, the film crew eventually begins to knowingly aid and abet the killer. This was a parody of a documentary and laughable. "Kidnapped for Christ" is not a parody and scares the hell out of me. Despite the subject matter of the film, the documentarian should strive to be "documenting" the matter, not participating in it in any way, shape or form. She should try to be as unbiased as possible instead of trying to shape public opinion. Kate Logan insults the viewer by telling us we're stupid by editing the film in a way that we don't have to think for ourselves. She is showing us her point of view and calling it a documentary. There is, of course, a bit at the end where two of the principals in the film come down for and against the Christian school. More of this would have made the movie better. But in other scenes, you can tell how one-sided the production is, such as the scene in which the youths are taken on an outing to Pico and play in the muddy grass there. Logan focuses on Tai, a young lady who doesn't like the mud and doesn't want to play in it. It is a scene where the central focus is Tai complaining about the outing and how much she hates it there. Strangely enough, Tai seems to be the only one complaining and sometimes she can't be heard due to the laughter and squeals of delight coming from the 99% of the kids who are enjoying the day. Why not interview someone who is part of that merriment for balance? Some of the "evidence" against the school is merely anecdotal at best, such as when director Logan overhears loud yelling outside her room on the campus and states that it came from one of the people in control who was yelling at his charge. We have to take her word for it as nothing is shown as evidence. When she points the camera out the window all seems calm with the two people involved. A wiser documentarian would have left this part out of the movie as it's clearly hearsay and can't be proved. I'm not saying that abuses did not happen at the school, even the people in charge agree that some have occurred. What I am saying is that the director of this film slanted it in such a way that it's impossible to determine what really happened at the school. It seems that Kate Logan was graciously granted permission to film on-site, which usually indicates that the people in charge had little to hide. She may have realized, once there, that a film without conflict won't sell in the United States. She seems to have tried to manufacture discontent with the available footage she possessed. For despite the ominous overtones of the film, we see no abuse happening, only hearsay. Kids have to make their beds and fold their clothes properly. Kids have to exercise when told to. Kids are told to obey authority. There is talk of "swats." This is somehow considered child abuse. We don't see any such "beatings" so we have to take the word of Logan, who has already showed us that this is a film she has slanted to force her views on the viewer. Did we think she would honestly show us more cinematic fairness after she tips her hand that she's one sided in the note exchanging scene with David? This is an evil movie. It does not appear to be about evil, but it is evil in the way it is edited and slanted, apparently for the sake of being a daring filmmaker exposing the truth...as she sees it. It is a vanity project that insults the viewer. The real title should be "Kate Bites Dog."

SBlues I just watched this Documentary, Kidnapped For Christ. It's a simple but good and necessary film that glances at what it's like for teens raised in Religious families that are forcibly moved to a foreign Country (Dominican Republic) to live in a Christian Camp-like Rehabilitation center for "troubled" teens that get into lots of trouble and/or disobey parents that feel they can longer control or influence their child's thoughts, behavior & life choices.Once there, the teens are force fed the usual judgmental/guilt-ridden melancholy BS found in all Bibles. They're forced to do various chores and a list of other strict things as well. They have to ask for permission to do everything and they have to be careful what they say and do; who they reveal anything to because they will be punished physically with a paddle, solitary confinement, verbal abuse and more. The film states that this type of organization is a Billion dollar business no doubt because the parents have to pay regular fees over a period of many months; likely until the parents and the organization feels it's time to return home.Many of the teens that are eventually released from these organizations are scarred for life because an imprint of all they endured is sealed in their minds forever, the few constructive methods as well as all the abusive methods. Anyone that has ever been abused (repeatedly) can tell you that those unpleasant/abusive moments experienced in life tend to stick with you and those memories can resurface when you least expect them to. They also have to face their parents again, the people that paid lots of money to make all this happen in the first place. Very extreme and expensive measures were taken by the parents in having their child "kidnapped" and shipped off to a foreign country to be cared for by unpredictable strangers that often appear emotionless & cold.I was definitely entertained and left with a lot of unanswered questions but I have a feeling much of the information left out was done so for legal reasons; yet the parents must have consented to allow their children to take part in this documentary because only a few random faces were blurred out.

Lowbacca1977 Several years ago, Jesus Camp circulated around as that film that horrified people, especially the nonreligious, when it came to how religion was pushing views on children. With Kidnapped for Christ, Jesus Camp seems like a welcome change.It's first noteworthy to mention the filmmaker. Kate Logan, a conservative Christian college student in the Dominican Republic for mission work, decided to do a documentary about a school there where American teenagers in crisis were sent. What she found there was teenagers that were woken up in the middle of the night by strangers and removed from the US, sometimes with no one outside their family knowing what happened to them, to be sent off to the Caribbean to have their behaviors corrected. Far from the extremes that one would expect to lead to this, some of them were fairly normal teenagers, all in all, before this happened.The film goes through the processes of the school by following a few of the 'students' there over the course of the several weeks that Logan was at the school. The reason her background is relevant is because as she continues, she starts to find her own faith challenged, as well as her approach to the film challenged, as she is repelled more and more by what's going on in the name of Christianity. And that's what gives this film so much power.... it tries to take a relatively fair stance, but the sheer weight of evidence is heavy enough that it has a clear conclusion, and it even runs counter and challenges her preconceived notions when she was coming into this situation in the first place. (Indeed, this might have never come to light if not for her background.So much of the power comes through what the three students she follows through go through, the way they talk about being treated, the fact that they've been sent to a foreign country without a say, and this is a film that I think very few people could watch and not find this upsetting, frustrating, angering, and disgusting.Logan shines a light on something that I would think most people in America don't even realize goes on, and something that even some of these parents don't realize, to the full extent, what these children are being subjected to.