Robert J. Maxwell Okay. We know that crimes like kidnapping and police corruption are common enough in some countries, but can we separate this particular piece of expository trash from the subject it deals with? It's a terrible movie in almost all respects. It's one of the ugliest movies ever made.The self righteousness of the writer/director, Jonathan Jakubowicz, spills out of every frame. Lord, how I hate being preached to, as if were some idiot desperately in need of enlightenment from some ambitious and complacent sage who believes he has all the answers. The epilogue spells it out, in case we missed it during the preceding hour and a half of pain. "The world is divided into halves -- the starving and the obese. And all we can do is take his food or invite him to the feast." Some sort of epigrammatic drivel like that.The message, I suppose, is that the poor are driven to crime out of desperation but Jakubowicz bungles even that. What we're left with is the conviction that everyone is rotten to the core -- rich and poor alike. So much for philosophy.As a director, Jakubowicz is right up there in the first rank of the fifth rate. Some comments, I notice, have blamed Quentin Tarantino for the style but that's misguided. Tarantino was an original in his first movies. I think Jakubowicz has borrowed heavily from Tarantino but he goes farther back than that for his technique -- back to MTV and ten-second television commercials. I counted four shots in which the camera did not move and the shot lasted one second or longer, then I got tired of waiting for the next one and stopped counting. The camera whirls dizzylingly, there are split-second close ups of eyeballs, ears, and gun muzzles. There are split screens. Sometimes the camera is strapped to the subject's chest. We see step motion and whiz bang pans. Fish-eye lenses turn the faces of people into those of porpoises. Unbearable.That's Jakubowicz the director. Then there is Jakubowicz the writer. The second is no improvement over the first. A gang of hoods kidnaps a rich young couple -- Maestro and Leroux -- and makes off with them, demanding a ransom. They taunt their captives. They pistol whip Leroux, call him names, punch his face repeatedly, while they cackle like maniacs. They argue and shout constantly at each other. They shoot for no reason at a couple of whores standing on the street. They relentlessly fog the air with the foulest of curses.And their captives? They may be rich young sophisticates but they're dopers too. Leroux turns out to be bisexual, much to the disgust of his fiancée. After she discovers this, Maestro, still held captive in the speeding car, begins to ridicule Leroux too. She asks if they have any grass for her to smoke and shares her Ecstasy with them. At times she joins in the insults of the gang and giggles along with them, although one or two cocked pistols are never more than a foot away from her beautiful nose. The police are easily bribed and the federal cops are sadistic rapists.There's no balance to the movie. Maestro is gorgeous but shallow. Leroux is a handsome coward. The quartet of sweaty gangsters has a collective intelligence equal to that of a doorknob. There's no one to root for.It isn't that the brutality, corruption, and crime are objectionable in themselves, nor is the lousy picture the film gives us of a city -- in this case Caracas, Venezuela. But similar subjects have been handled before, and exponentially better, in movies like "Serpico" or "Taxi Driver" or "Los Olvidados." This dumpster full of basura isn't worth any more comment. See it only if you really want a reason to hang yourself.

mayorkarma First of all I'll give secuestro express a five out of ten. Not so good and not so bad. Maybe the photography and shooting could have been better.Second and finally, and for those who called this movie "unrealistic", definitely they do not live in Latin American Cities (Caracas in this particular case). Of course not all is dangerous streets and corners but kidnappings are the meals of every day. Police and Military Officers are 75% corrupts (I'd say) and in most of cases they'r the performers of the biggest crimes along the country. (Just to give u an idea, recently some cops kidnapped 3 young little children's of a business man and killed them because the situation got too much complicated.Unrealistic???? Live here and then you can tell what you want.Caracas is a beautiful neglected city in which you can take a ride but with your eyes wide open.

jll_quake90 Secuestro Express is a great movie, no doubt about it, but why does Hollywood has to be so DUMB??... When you see the trailers you expect no more than a action movie...but for those who live in Venezuela ( as myself) there's nothing of action o fiction in this movie, what you see there is the sad but true life that we live here in Caracas, every day when you're walking down the street, when you're driving you're car, when you're at home, you're always thinking, am i going to be next? why is the police stealing people? why are those gangsters ( malandros) looking at me that way? YES here in VEnezuela having something is a crime, it doesn't matter if you worked for it, if you have something that others don't you're a possible victim of crime. TO not make it so much of a complain about Venezuela but about the way the film was turned, I would like to say, this movie may be "fiction"cause its was taken in an controlled environment, but what you see in that movie happens everyday, its not something COOL, or JUST "bang bang" its a reality for all those who live here, it would be great if people saw that and not just ohhh cool another action movie...

robbierunciman Normally in a box like this you would say how much you enjoyed or hated a movie, in this case I think the word 'enjoy' is too pervy. I think that the film maker presents a gritty drama about a crime phenomenon in South America without judging anyone, who is the bad guy, obviously the flaky boy friend. I always watch these movies in hope that the world they show does not exist and the film is over egging the pudding, but sadly things you read elsewhere show how true it is and like many other movies from South America, they show the disparity in wealth between the haves and have nots'. In the past, we could be smug about our societies not being like that, but I am not so sure anymore. I thought that the acting was believable especially from the victims, I am not sure about the hoodlum with principles considering the cruelty of everything else the 'bad guys' did.