Captive isn't much of director Brillante Ma Mendoza's shape. Or maybe it is. Kinatay was one of his early plights that was enough to create some buzz, a story about a broke criminology student who defies his humanity in exchange for extra money. Less like Kinatay, Captive is a lot easier to watch, or maybe it isn't.
Loosely based off the Dos Palmas kidnappings that happened in Palawan, Southern Philippines back in 2001, Captive follows many people who were took hostage by the Abu Sayyaf Group (a group of terrorist) to a lengthy year of unspeakable discomfort and danger. The captives had to walk in the Filipino Jungle, so they remain untraceable, while their captors negotiate for ransom. French-actor Isabelle Huppert (The Piano Teacher) plays Therese, a social worker/missionary who is reeled in the chaotic experience, and arguably one of the very few plausible things the movie can present.
Huppert is the film's saving grace, if it remains inclusive of salvation. Her adept re-enactment of her character's anguish is wide and clear. As Therese, whose three-dimensional character requires dynamics, the French-actress seem ably to me. The rest of the cast is okay, and sad if samey, if not acceptable.
Mendoza's solid affinity with "no subtlety" is to be found, and weirdly appears to me impressive. In an all-out intense action sequence which happens in a city hospital, a scene involved a "very" graphic delivery of a pregnant woman. And by "very", I mean the "in-your-face, for-real-happening" variety. Mendoza's handheld shots and arty color-grading changes deserve a mention. While the story is entirely two-sided, Mendoza managed to build the ASG characters with personal goals and purposes.
Until sub-machine guns and snipers began to blow muzzle flashes, the pic was provided with many of that of the same thing. Some of the sequences served no purpose at all, except to resonate whatsoever it wants to display, otherwise for redundancy purposes. In scenes which involved no Isabelle Huppert, the movie slows down, but grips back as Huppert displays something to root for. And then there she disappears of focus, then the tension wanes. And then there she is back, and we're invested once again, but not for long, if we're not with her the next minute. Especially if we are presented an awfully made CGI bird (a Sarimanok, a Filipino mythical bird). An ensemble of fauna served as transitions of sequences which didn't made any connection to whatsoever part of the pic.
Mendoza's first feature to advance to Berlin is rather overlong, and mainly mundane in many ways, but reasonably intense. If fleeting and ain't repetitive, there's Berlin-winner quality underneath Captive, a movie, I therefore conclude, isn't for everyone. B
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