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Movie review: KIDNAP

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KIDNAP 

* * ½

(Car chase in real time)

Joyce, like many mothers and grandmothers, did not want to see a movie about a little boy being kidnapped, so this one's on me.

Halle Berry plays a single mother who takes her six-year-old son to the park. She's a good mom, keeping track of Frankie by playing the kid's game Marco Polo, but when she yells "Marco" and doesn't hear a "Polo" she panics. She watches her son shoved into a car by a woman and hops in her car to chase after them.

The entire movie, shot in real time over an hour and 20 minutes, is one big car chase, ending up in a spooky farmhouse with the enraged mother determined to rescue her son and do harm to the kidnappers. There are some exciting moments centered around this ordinary woman put in an extraordinary situation, but there are just too many flaws in the script. You don't see much of the boy during the chase, which is probably just as well.

First of all, we have to listen to Berry talk to herself throughout the entire chase. Her pursuit and outrageous chances she takes puts her son in danger. And there are too many coincidences in losing to kidnappers and magically finding them again.

"Kidnap" may have been an OK made-for-TV movie, but it doesn't quite cut it for a major release.

Rated R because of violence.

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