Kidnap ★★

    Halle Berry stars in "Kidnap," a movie that halfheartedly raises awareness for the missing person epidemic. I'm not saying that the film doesn't try. The problem is that it does, at least in one emotionally-driven scene, and it fails miserably. (For the sake of being fair, it's a thriller, an abduction thriller to be exact, and action unfailingly succeeds meaning in this subgenre.)

    Berry is Karla Dyson, a divorced, single mother with the cutest little boy imaginable. (We're shown enough home videos via the opening credits to where no other opinion can be formed.) Not surprisingly, the rest of the plot is pretty routine—mom takes son to the park, she loses sight of him, and (drum roll, please) he is kidnapped. Of course, moviegoers will have to ignore the cause of this complication (a mother's inattentiveness) if they are to enjoy this crapfest (we're supposed to feel sympathy for her plight), and if that doesn't tickle your funny bone, there's a laundry list of other cinematic "oopsies" to sneer at.

    I'm sure the intent was to craft a top-of-the-line suspense piece, but director Luis Prieto and screenwriter Knate Lee clearly bit off more than they could chew. How so? Well, the script is thin and seems unfinished, and the car chase scenes (which consist of Berry's character pursuing her son's captors for more than half the movie) are amateurishly done and chock-full of monotony. (If you want to be technical about it, the former suffers from a lack of logic and plot points; the latter relies solely on conventional shots of speedometers and passing asphalt in order to entertain.) To be candid, not even a brash, twenty-five-year-old filmmaking messiah could save this picture from complete mortification. (This is a reference to Steven Spielberg and his work on "Duel," which is the benchmark for highway thrillers. My advice to Prieto is this: If you have a template, use it.)

    How hard is it, I wonder, for Halle Berry to find a good screenplay in Hollywood? I mean, this is an Academy Award winner we're talking about, and here she is slumming around on the set of a movie that's one cheesy line of dialogue away from being a Lifetime premiere event. Now, there's no denying that Berry's career has tailed off recently; nonetheless, it is her sincerity that saves "Kidnap" from reaching putrid status. (Berry has never looked better, and her execution in this film, especially on an emotional front, proves that she still has it.) While we're on the subject, there is another scene-stealer in attendance—that being, a Chrysler Town & Country minivan. I can hear the advertisement now: "It has off-road capabilities, can stop on a dime, and it can even take the beating of your wildest dreams and still run." In all seriousness, however, this vehicle of vengeance laps up about as much screen time as our resident star, and if you can somehow get past the haphazard direction, it's one helluva ride.

    "Kidnap" pales in comparison to movies like "Breakdown," an abduction thriller with a gift for showing off, and it's only slightly more engaging than Berry's last outing ("The Call"), which isn't saying much. (In sum, it's a serviceable depiction of a mother who will stop at nothing to retrieve her missing son—just without that pesky thing called reasoning.) I'm no expert in human behavior (if I were, I'd be making a lot more money), but a handful of questionable decisions were made by our rogue protagonist. For instance, there's a scene early on where Dyson actually confronts the kidnappers, but instead of defusing the situation, she allows them to gain the upper hand. (Then again, plots of this capacity need incompetence to fill up the allotted time.) Here's hoping that Berry lands a role with some brains and soon.