Kidnapped (2021)

Nothing to do with Robert Louis Stevenson, he'd be in a hurry to tell you, this mindless mystery fare, like an especially poorly plotted episode of Murder, She Wrote, has an American couple running around a small Australian island resort called Koala Sanctuary looking for their daughter missing from hotel childcare, but who among the wooden Australian extras would want to kidnap the girl and for what possible motive you will know immediately as the story, like a Days Of Our Lives subplot given more credence than it is due plays out in soapy, bleedingly obvious fashion.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

I Am Elizabeth Smart (2017)

Competently acted with Skeet Ulrich in the role of Brian David Mitchell (the man who kidnapped 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart in 2002 and who over nine months subjected her to rape and torture in the Utah wilderness), this made-for-tv movie is essentially a survivor impact statement with Smart herself appearing between scenes to narrate her oft-revisited real life crime story but this time from her now adult perspective as a mother, wife and activist against predatory crimes. 

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Reclaim (2014)

While in the Dominican Republic, an American couple - one of the pair, Ryan Phillipe in a defiantly white tee - falls victim to a human trafficking scam that proves so dull a badly animated and wholly unnecessary cgi car-dangling-from-a-cliff sequence is thrown in towards the movie's end in an effort to liven things up, but it doesn't and nor do the repetitive oh-no-the-bad-guy-(John-Cusack)-rises-again (and chases the couple through the forest again) endscenes.

★☆☆☆☆