CAPTIVITY
‘Torture Porn’?
by Vishal Verma

Producers: Mark Damon, Sergei Konov, Gary Mehlman, & Leonid Minkovski
Executive Producer: Valery Chumak & Courtney Solomon.
Co-Producers: Stephanie Caleb, Jill Gatsby, Alexandra Mehlman,Tamara Stuparich, & De la Barra
Line Producers: James D. Deck, Boris Galkin, Joel Hatch. 
Genre: Horror- Porn.
Runtime: 1 hr 38 mins
Censorship Rating: R - for strong violence, torture, pervasive terror, grisly images, language and some sexual material.
Starring: Elisha Cuthbert, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Laz Alonso, Daniel Gillies, Michael Harney
Screenwriter: Larry Cohen, Joseph Tura
Composer: Marco Beltrami
Cinematography: Daniel Pearl.
Editor: Richard Nord
Casting: Dianne Crittenden & Karen Rea
Production Design: Addis Gadzhiyev
India Release By: PVR
Media Promotion (India): Rediffusion DYR

Technical Analysis
Being an Indian by birth and a cricket fan, in my adolescent age I was use to those boring commentaries which said that the game is a big leveler and all that blah blah.

I never knew cinema can also be a paradox in such a shockingly farce experience and that to from Roland Joffé. ‘Captivity’ is more torturing &suffering experience for the audience then the blonde damsel Elisha’s incidents in this horrendous adventure by Roland Joffe.

Agreed that the movie was nominated for Razzies last year, but seeing the name of Roland Joffe, it still manages to draw interest cause the helmer is one of the few directors who had made a remarkable impact on world audience as story tellers with stunning visual Sensitivity, Courtesy: The Golden Bear nominee in Berlin ‘Fat Man and Little Boy’ (1989) and of course the Oscar nominees –‘The Mission’ and ‘The Killing fields’.

What on earth attracted Roland to coin the idea of an evening where ‘SAW’ and ‘HOSTEL’ meet ‘SILENCE OF THE LAMBS’ and makes you numbed, is a mystery which even Holmes, Christie and our own carrot chewing Karamchand will fail miserably even when they all try to solve it as a team.       .

The problem over here is the movie doesn’t even dares and cares to answer the questions in the morals of this psychopathy which seems to exist only to depict the suffering of multiple women through hideous tortures, the film is still an empty mess, offering only a minor afterthought of an explanation to who is doing the evil and why.

Adding more salt and pepper to the injury, it makes me hard to understand why an exceptionally great director Roland Joffé is reduced to helming an ill-conceived grindhouse turk like this is which is beyond all rationality.

The Story
Neither particularly shocking nor provocative, The film's first hour is a brutally stripped down version of the formula similar from other torture horror films like the Saw and Hostel series. With an absolute minimum of dialogue and back-story, where Top cover girl and fashion model, Jennifer Tree (Elisha Cuthbert) has it all - beauty, fame, money and power. Out alone at a charity event in New York's Soho, Jennifer is drugged and held captive in a cell, subjected to a series of terrifying, life-threatening tortures. When she meets Gary (Daniel Gillies), another prisoner captive as a pawn in the sick games, they try their bets to escape from the cells and defeat the madman behind the sick games as the truth about their horrific abduction is revealed.

Promotion
The pre-release poster campaign in the west was controversial for glorifying torture as an entertainment medicine. And had to face the wrath of the parents, but in anyway it did the prime purpose of gathering attention. Down here, the ‘mamala’ is some what ‘thanda’ and needs some gimmicks like the one in ‘phoonk’ which gave the film a remarkable opening.

Anyway, Media Promotion (India) by Rediffusion DYR has been reasonable. 

 Business Analysis
"Torture Porn" is not a favorite flavor in Indian movie goer’s regular palette which includes sci fi, action, animation, romantic comedies or musicals.  The going will be tough.