Very disappointed :(

Did you people see the same film I saw?

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Yeah, this is a throwaway thriller from back in the days but it aged well. It is about a rich guy who's son gets kidnapped and held for ransom. But the tables turn when the rich guy offers the ransom as a bounty. Mel Gibson makes this movie work. His intensity and high- level acting pushes what should have been an average thriller over the top. Would I not recommend hunting this film down just to watch it but if it was on television and you had nothing better to do, it is a relatively good waste of time.

Tom Mullen (Mel Gibson) is a wealthy businessman who may have some darker methods. He has a loving wife Kate (Rene Russo) and a son who gets kidnapped. The kidnappers demand $2M. Tom calls in the FBI. Something goes wrong when the FBI crashes in on the money drop. The reporters are now following the story. When the kidnappers try again for the ransom, Tom changes the game plan. Instead of giving $2M to the criminals, he goes on TV to offer the money as bounty for the kidnappers' heads.This is a Ron Howard directed movie. It is functionally made. There is something about Mel Gibson and/or his character that makes him unlikeable. I don't know if it's the union bribe that is hinted at right from the start, or the intensity that he gives off even to his son. He's like a guy with a mean streak trying desperately to show that he's just a nice guy. There is something offputting with Mel Gibson's overwrought acting in this. Same thing goes for the story. There is just something wrong with it. The FBI is hanging out at his apartment and following him in those FBI jackets. There is a lack of intensity. The story is kinda of scattered. And there are things about the kidnapping, payoff, then plan change that doesn't make sense. Maybe crime drama is just not in Ron Howard's wheelhouse.

I found this movie to be a complete garbage, like most of the movies starring (or directed) by Mel Gibson. (I think that "The Passion of the Christ" might be one of the very few notorious exceptions)This movie is pathetic and boring. It lacked an interesting, likable characters or any kind of redeeming value. There simply wasn't anything good about this atrocious film.It was a terrible film, and it was the worst Ron Howard movie, along with his "Da Vinci Code" film (A terrible adaptation of an equally terrible book) and the dreadful "Angels & Demons".If you want to see a good movie directed by Ron Howard see "Cinderella Man" or "Apollo 13" and skip this nonsense.

Yes, I enjoyed watching this movie - even though it felt at times that it would never end. It looks like there are enough reviews on here praising its technical "merits" by Hollywood criteria. I for one do not think the acting had much quality or depth to it at all (Gibson's is really inconsistent/ delirious), nor would I say at all that this is a "good" film story, just an enjoyable one, and a compelling one for the following reason; This is possibly the most thinly-veiled cinematic propagation of a Neoliberal capitalist mentality I have seen - from the mid-nineties: White collar criminal (Gibson) gains his redemption / dignity and the respect of his family and government (the skeptical FBI agent (Lindo)) by pursuing a stubborn, risky path of non-negotiation (which jeopardizes the life of his son). Gibson's character refuses to pay-off the "human garbage" who could partially be seen to represent an extralegal justice.. and effectively pits the actors who constitute the threat to his decadent life against one another; the competition literally destroys itself -for the most part. The final scene is the most unbelievable, where we see the corporate 'hero' disobey the faithful but ineffective state - the officers demanding that he "drop the gun", who failed to take down the wayward dissatisfied officer from their ranks. A sort of case for the benefits of extreme self-interest, privatization, deregulation of business, realpolitik, etc.? This is an interesting watch as it significantly predates the wall street crash, the more contemporary political-economic policy that one would associate with this sort of message, and the more recent flashier action films (i.e. Nolan's Dark Knight, Miller's 300 etc) that are recognizable now as the Hollywood promotion of (I would say quite TOXIC) Neoliberalism. Thanks for reading.