`Ransom” is a good, taut modern thriller about a wealthy airline president — well played by Mel Gibson — and his battle of wits and nerves with the kidnappers holding his 10-year-old son for ransom.
Directed by Ron Howard and co-written by Richard Price and Alexander Ignon, this movie is slick and fast, with solid professionals at the controls. Well done in every department, it’s especially notable for its superb cast: Gibson and Rene Russo as parents Tom and Kate Mullen, Gary Sinise and Delroy Lindo as an intense police detective and a paternalistic FBI agent, and, as part of the kidnap gang, Lili Taylor, Liev Schreiber and Donnie Wahlberg.
Displaying the same intelligence and clarity with which he scoped the space program in “Apollo 13,” Howard anatomizes the kidnapping and its investigation, from the moment the Mullens’ son Sean (Brawley Nolte, son of Nick) is snatched in Central Park, to the violent wrap-up. As the parents become more frantic, as the police and FBI try to track the kidnappers, as the media closes in and as the gang leader establishes a weird, teasing relationship with Gibson’s Tom Mullen on the phone, the movie calmly keeps tightening the screws.
Howard and company do a mostly bang-up job. Yet “Ransom” may be hampered by the unwritten box-office rules that demand roller coaster set-pieces over psychology, bloody climaxes over drama. There’s no particular reason beyond those rules for Gibson to start acting like an over-the-edge action hero instead of a frightened dad in certain scenes — even though Mullen is an ex-bomber pilot. And there’s no reason to load up “Ransom” with these contrived setups; when we’re responding most strongly to this movie, it’s usually because of the characters.
As the tormented dad and the pragmatic cop, Gibson and Sinise deliver often memorable, galvanizing performances. Gibson’s Mullen is a high-tech guy hurled into chaos, a self-made man whose world is being ripped apart and who begins to succumb to wild fear, anger and a fierce desire for personal justice. Sinise’s Jimmy Shaker is a cop who’s been out on the street so long, who’s so steeped in crime,
nothing can faze him any more. His outlook — which has become almost indistinguishable from that of the crooks he contemptuously busts — has a spiky cool, a brutal flat cynicism with which he measures every moment, calculates every risk.
As actors, Gibson and Sinise both excel at keeping strong emotions boiling under a stoical surface. And, as they play off each other — along with Lindo as the streetwise agent Lonnie Hawkins and Russo as Mullen’s increasingly scared wife — they give “Ransom” far more depth and emotion than the average modern big-star Hollywood thriller.
In some ways, this movie is a throwback anyway. Price and Ignon are adapting a 1956 MGM film, starring Glenn Ford and Donna Reed as the terrified parents, directed by Alex Segal and written by Cyril Hume and Richard Maibaum (head writer for decades on the James Bond series).
That original “Ransom” was one of many ’50s crime thrillers — including “The Desperate Hours” and “Violent Saturday” — where law-abiding citizens collide bloodily with professional criminals. But Price didn’t choose to rewrite that script because — as with his recent remakes of “Night and the City” and “Kiss of Death” — he’s reworking a recognized classic. Except for TV, 1956’s “Ransom” has been unavailable for years and is now largely forgotten. (This movie will probably spur a video revival.)
Instead, Price and Howard seems more fascinated with the story’s potential. They use extreme contrasts: the besieged parents in their Manhattan penthouse high above Central Park and the criminals holed up in a dingy basement apartment in a rough area of Queens. The kidnappers are an oddball bunch that often resembles a fringe rock ‘n’ roll band more than a gang of criminals — and it’s clear that their leader chose to grab Mullen’s son as much from envy and malice as from greed.
Howard, unjustly regarded by some critics as a bland, big-budget director (for family hits like “Cocoon” and “Parenthood”), made a major breakthrough last year with “Apollo 13.” And he’s obviously trying for much darker material here, shredding the cocoon of humor and sympathy with which he usually protects his movie families.
Price (“Clockers,” “The Color of Money”) is among Hollywood’s grittiest and most knowing urban screenwriters. And the Polish cinematographer Piotr Sobocinski, who helps give “Ransom” a vivid modern noir look, shot both “Red” and part of “The Decalogue” for Krzysztof Kieslowski.
So “Ransom” is a mass-audience movie with something extra, trying to pull in people at the same time it examines the cracks and fissures of society, the agonies of insiders and outsiders. The filmmakers will get their huge audience. But it’s a shame they don’t fully deliver on their other goals as well — something you can see clearly by comparing “Ransom” with another, very similar movie kidnap thriller: Akira Kurosawa’s great 1962 “High and Low.”
“High and Low” was adapted from the American novel “King’s Ransom” by Ed McBain (a k a Evan Hunter) — and it also depicts a tense battle between an industrialist victim (Toshiro Mifune) and a jealous kidnapper (Tsutomo Yamazaki). But, for all its nail-biting action, there is nothing in “Ransom” that has the annihilating impact of “High and Low’s” suspense scenes and numbing climax.
I’m sure Howard wouldn’t mind being compared to Kurosawa, even if it’s to point out that he’s fallen short of a master. But did the movie have to fall short? The frustrating thing about “Ransom” is that it has the elements — and the cast — to give us something that powerful, that wrenching. But, if they had, could they have simultaneously won the mass audience, which will probably go to “Ransom” in droves?
”RANSOM”
(star) (star) (star)
Directed by Ron Howard; written by Richard Price and Alexander Ignon, based on the screenplay by Cyril Hume and Richard Maibaum; photographed by Piotr Sobocinski; edited by Dan Hanley, Mike Hill; production designed by Michael Corenblith; music by James Horner; produced by Scott Rudin, Brain Grazer, B. Kipling Hagopian. A Touchstone Pictures release; opens Friday. Running time: 2:01. MPAA rating: R. Language, violence.
THE CAST
Tom Mullen …………………….. Mel Gibson
Kate Mullen ……………………. Rene Russo
Detective Jimmy Shaker ………….. Gary Sinise
FBI Agent Lonnie Hawkins ………… Delroy Lindo
Maris Connor …………………… Lili Taylor
Clark Barnes …………………… Liev Schreiber
