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Captive | 2015 | PG-13 | - 3.5.3

A rapist (David Oyelowo) escapes trial after killing three people in the courtroom and captures a lonely methamphetamine addict (Kate Mara) as a hostage. Held for seven hours by the potentially deadly criminal, she reads aloud from Rick Warren's inspirational bestseller "The Purpose Driven Life" in an attempt to change her life and persuade the man to surrender to the police. Also with Michael K. Williams, Leonor Varela, Jessica Oyelowo and Mimi Rogers. Directed by Jerry Jameson. [1:37]

SEX/NUDITY 3 - A man carries a woman to a bedroom and lays her face down on the bed as she calls out, "No, no, no! You don't have to do this"; she cries, thinking that he will rape her and he duct tapes her hands behind her back (there's no rape).
 We hear that a man raped a woman with whom he had been living for seven years; he tells another woman that he did not commit rape and that the victim was only mad at him because he impregnated another woman and she cried rape for revenge and he goes on to say that the woman cheated on him with a Christian minister. A woman and a man had a baby and are not married.
 A woman wears a cut-off tank top that reveals cleavage, part of her abdomen, and her upper buttocks; in one scene, we see her bra straps and the outline of her nipples in the material of the top. A man wears a suit coat while shirtless underneath and we see the center of his chest and part of his abdomen. A man places a towel over the head and face of a woman sitting on a closed toilet in her bathroom and takes a shower (we see his bare chest).

VIOLENCE/GORE 5 - A man steals a suit, a handgun, and a police walkie-talkie from a jailhouse, then breaks a surveillance camera and we hear a siren; he shoots a deputy who falls to the floor, presumably dead and enters an almost empty courtroom where he shoots the judge who falls backwards, he shoots a woman who falls straight down (we do not see the wound, but hear that she died) and we later see a body bag as a man wheels it on a gurney out of the courtroom. Police detectives with handguns in their waistbands search a partially constructed house and find an off-duty FBI officer lying on his back, dead, with a little blood on his middle chest.
 A man runs out of a courthouse and down a street to a parking garage where he punches a man unconscious, steals his wallet and car, squealing its tires; he sees a police cruiser with flashing lights at the exit gate and parks the car, runs out on foot, carjacks a man at gunpoint in traffic and drives off with the car, squealing its tires. A female deputy leads a handcuffed felon from a police van to a jail cell and uncuffs him so he can change clothes for a trial, but he punches her unconscious; on the floor, she receives three more punches below the frame and we later see her unconscious with a little blood on her face and hear that she is comatose (during the end credits, we read that she never fully recovered). A woman walks to her front door at 2:30 am and a man grabs her, covers her mouth with his hand and forces her inside at gunpoint; he threatens to kill and to hurt her and later threatens to hurt her little girl who lives with an aunt (he looked through the mail and found the address). A man slams the back of woman's head into a bathroom mirror and cracks it (she is not injured), he duct-tapes her wrists together and sits her on the edge of a bathtub, then carries her to the bed in the bedroom, where he turns her over onto her face and cuts the wrist tapes with a large kitchen knife, then re-tapes her hands behind her back, tapes her ankles and lower legs up to the knees and places her in a seated position on a closed toilet (please see the Sex/Nudity category for more details).
 A man grabs three handguns after seeing a police helicopter descending outside and he shoots out the TV as a news report about him begins; SWAT officers, other snipers, and police officers set up heavy automatic weapons and rifles, aiming them and handguns at the apartment where the felon is hiding. A freed hostage wears a bulletproof vest and shakily agrees to try talking to the felon through a bullhorn; she says, "It's not too late. Do the right thing" and he is given 30 seconds to come out whereupon he waves a white towel in the window and through an open door; he kneels on the sidewalk, clasps his hands behind his head, lies face down, and receives a thick plastic wrist restraint tying his hands behind his back.
 TVs in three scenes and radios in two scenes announce a multiple murderer as the subject of a citywide manhunt. A man listens to police broadcasts on a walkie-talkie and when a police detective begins speaking to him on it, the man becomes angry, smashing the device on the floor; he says, "Kill a cop and a cop kills you," indicating that the police will not let him live. A woman and her aunt argue briefly. A doctor states that a felon has episodes of depression, paranoia, denial, and memory loss of a rape that he committed. A man says that a judge wanted to enslave him for something he did not do. A man tells a woman, "I didn't rape anyone." A woman tells a man that her husband is dead, killed by a drug dealer and it is all her fault for becoming addicted (please see the Substance Use category for more details). A man says that his judge at trial wanted to enslave him falsely, so he killed the judge, and "You know what? It felt good. The man who killed your husband, do you forgive him?"; she says, "I don't know. Maybe God can." A man and a woman ride in a car with the woman driving and she asks, "Why did you kill all those people?"; the man does not answer as a police cruiser with siren sounding and lights flashing pulls up behind them and the woman pulls over, but the cruiser passes and travels onward. We see a TV news report that police found a male FBI agent shot dead and found the getaway pickup truck abandoned without a clue to the whereabouts of the killer.
 A man looks through a house window at his newborn son and hides behind bushes across the street as several police cruisers pull up with flashing lights; we see a handgun in his hand. A man grabs two handguns from a countertop and throws them on top of three other handguns on a table. A man with a gun uses a stolen pickup truck and follows a woman in her car and she stalls at a traffic light around 4:00 AM; another man stops to ask if she needs help and the first man exits the pickup (we see a handgun held behind his back); the first man leaves the intersection after all three people look up and see a police chopper with a searchlight shining.
 A woman revs her car engine as if she may run a man over, but does not; he gets into her car and the scene ends. A female hostage leaves her apartment, squeals her tires on her way out of her parking lot and calls 911, but her cell phone dies before she is finished; she pulls over to the side of the road and cries.
 A man intoxicated on meth (please see the Substance Use category for more details) tells a woman to hurry and go to the bathroom so they can leave for Mexico and rob a bank. A man enters a bathroom occupied by a woman and she tells him to leave, but he tells her to keep talking so he knows she is in there; he slaps the door and says that he hears other people in there, then rushes in to find her standing up and clothed. A man says that his father attended church every Sunday, but was a mean drunk; he goes on to say, "I got a demon in me."
 A frustrated detective shakes and hits a malfunctioning coffee machine until it falls over and coffee pours onto the floor.
 A man crawls to the toilet and puts his head in (we hear retching and spitting but do not see vomit).
 Closing credits display ID photos of a felon's four courthouse murder victims, a woman and three men.

LANGUAGE 3 - 3 scatological terms, 1 mild obscenity (sounds like "damn"), name-calling (weird, crazy), 7 religious exclamations (Thank God, Oh thank God, God Please Help Me, Jesus Loves You, Jesus Be Looking At You, God's Purpose Is Bigger Than Problems).

SUBSTANCE USE - A woman holds a small plastic zip-lock bag of meth and nearly pours it down a toilet, two scenes depict a woman looking at a compact mirror on which we see some white powder that we hear it is meth and beside it is a rolled dollar bill (the woman has a dazed look in her eyes indicative of snorting meth), a male criminal asks a woman for "weed" and she says she has none then admits to having meth (she gets out a compact, and rolls a dollar bill for the man), a man says that ladies should go first when snorting meth together and she declines (we see the compact mirror with a razor blade and some meth on top), a man bends below the frame twice and snorts and then comes up grimacing and pinching his nose, a man becomes animated and he babbles and hoots while jumping up and down as he talks about going to Mexico and robbing a bank, and a man asks a woman if she contaminated the drugs with something and uses a handgun to force a woman's face toward the compact mirror holding some meth and then orders her to snort it (she does not and he removes the gun and walks away). A woman lights and smokes a cigarette at home, and a woman walks to her car and finds a fresh cigarette that she lights and smokes in the street.

DISCUSSION TOPICS - Crime, murder, rape, regret, faith, forgiveness, second chances, redemption, drug abuse, recovery, hope, courage, trust, justice, the willingness to change.

MESSAGE - Everyone is looking for hope and deserves a second chance.

CAVEATS

Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.

We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.

Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.


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