Halle Berry's mad mama cranks up dumbed-down abduction thriller 'Kidnap'
Two of the year's finest film performances can be found in the child abduction thriller "Kidnap."
They belong to Halle Berry's eyes.
Cinematographer Flavio Martínez Labiano's camera lens insists on framing Berry's face in tight, studied close-ups because those eyes - liquid brown pools of electrified, haunted emotion - tell this story far more effectively than Knate Lee's juvenile, condescendingly overwritten dialogue.
The moment that Berry's Karla Dyson, a mom going through a painful divorce, realizes that her 6-year-old son Frankie (Sage Correa) has vanished from his seat at a Louisiana carnival, the eyes go to work, broadcasting a blend of confusion, disorientation and escalating fear.
When Karla finally spots her son being forced into an old Mustang, the eyes go jack-crazy with panic that instantly transforms into desperate resolve as she jumps into her Town and Country van to begin the white-knuckle car chase that becomes the nucleus of this thriller.
The biggest crime committed in "Kidnap" has nothing to do with Frankie's abduction and everything to do with Luis Prieto's miscalculated direction.
He does not recognize the gift he has received in Berry. He does not trust Berry to carry this movie, so he dilutes everything she says and does with dumbed-down explanatory words and visuals.
Before Karla spots her son in the Mustang, she finds his toy voice recorder on his seat. She plays it. She hears a woman's voice telling Frankie that his mother's waiting for him in the parking lot, and she will take Frankie to her.
Berry's wide eyes pull us into her soul as the recording confirms her worst fear.
All Prieto had to do was train the camera on Berry.
No. Prieto resorts to a cheap, reality-TV re-enactment of the event, fearing audiences need the visuals to stay invested in the moment.
This would be like Steven Spielberg not trusting Robert Shaw to deliver his iconic USS Indianapolis soliloquy in "Jaws," so he supplies flashbacks of screaming sailors being eaten by sharks.
Despite considerable narrative glitches, "Kidnap" still operates on a primal level as an effective, audience-pleasing thriller, mainly because Berry's mama-bear performance overpowers the script and direction deficiencies.
Her seemingly spontaneous, crackling cross-country chase to save her son sets us up for an unusual - and chillingly unpredictable - confrontation with the backwoods kidnappers.
They're a scraggly thin man named Terry ("Walking Dead" star Lew Temple, in person at this weekend's Flashback Weekend Horror Convention in Rosemont) and his homicidal wife Margo (a game Chris McGinn, possibly channeling Large Marge before she became a truck driver ghost in "Pee-wee's Big Adventure").
Despite her fully committed performance (she's never afraid to look battered and bruised), Berry struggles to make clunker dialogue such as "You picked the wrong kid!" sound authentic.
Good thing her eyes have already said it.
“Kidnap”
★ ★ ½
Starring: Halle Berry, Lew Temple, Chris McGinn, Sage Correa
Directed by: Luis Prieto
Other: An Aviron Pictures release. Rated R for violence. 100 minutes