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Great Film overall

Did you people see the same film I saw?

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

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.

This is a fast-paced thriller about the kidnapping of a rich young couple after a night of clubbing and drug-taking in Caracas. The group then drive through the night and into the next day while they wait for the couple's parents to come up with the ransom money. The plot is full of twists and turns, and it was quite entertaining. However, a lot of what happens does not seem very realistic. I have the overriding impression that the movie is trying too hard to be cool and not trying hard enough to tell a convincing story.Channelling the spirit of Tarantino, the gang of kidnappers are often funny though sometimes horribly cruel. They repeatedly justify their criminal activity, explaining that "half the city is starving". In general, though, the movie's efforts to discuss the social issues in Caracas are not well done. It also doesn't help the movie's progressive credentials that the homosexual characters are treated in such an unsympathetic manner.As for the abducted couple, they don't inspire sympathy. Martin is a rich and selfish pretty boy who enjoys taking lots of drugs and, it turns out, has been indulging in homosexual encounters for years, unbeknownst to his fiancé Carla. She is also pretty and rich, but unlike Martin, she has a social conscience. She volunteers at a public hospital and is considering whether to let a poor, sick child come and live in her home. However, she seems to think that her volunteer work entitles her to better treatment from the kidnappers. She also shares Martin's partying and drug-taking lifestyle. Oddly, she also starts to bond with the kidnappers, chatting with them and repeatedly helping them get out of jams.The director has thrown many twists and turns into the plot, but it would have been better if each was more fully developed. For example, when the despicable Martin has a chance to escape from the kidnappers, he abandons Carla without even going to seek help for her. Instead he tries to take a taxi home, but it turns out the driver is in cahoots with the kidnappers and returns Martin to them. This was a surprising (if unlikely) twist, and was one of many bizarre little twists thrown into the plot. I think it could have been done more cleverly by explaining why Martin didn't immediately go to the police and by somehow making it more likely that he'd end up in the hands of the kidnappers' friend.

This movie is simply an offensive, unreal and exploitative movie made by a Cheap Tarantino rip off, who didn't hesitate to sell out his country culture to get a shameful pass to Hollywood..Jakubowikz is even lower than the characters depicted in his awful piece of cinematic dung.It portraits Caracas (and Latin America by rebound) as a horrible and inhospitable hellhole of drugs, constant street violence and utterly corrupt and extremely putrid Cops (and Military) , with nothing redeeming and not a trace of law and order at all.The stupid, unreal kidnappers depicted here justify their actions by pointing out that most of the country is starving, like it were an excuse to commit crime and behave sadistically."Gangsta" Robin Hoods, what an original idea !! Is full of cheap clichés and unreal characters: 1.- An unbelievable middle Class "Social Justice warrior" street lowlife with a "heart of gold" , associated with2.-The two little-better-than-animals, sadistic "ghetto-Gangsta" insufferable stereotypes.Dark skinned and extremely poor, of course. The darker a guy is, the worse.3.- The "poor little rich girl cliché" who volunteers at a public clinic and loves the "poor and the pauper" but also likes to party wildly, swallow tons of pills and several other drugs (a cross between Mother Theresa and Sid Vicious) AND, inexplicably, is deeply in love and ENGAGED with 4.- An incredibly shallow, insensitive, inhuman, unmoral, cocaine-loving, unlikable, twisted sociopath, stupid, antipathetic upper class boyfriend.There's some unreal situations: After a five year relationship and in a matter of few hours, Martin, the creepy Boyfriend:1.- Goes "out of the closet" and, in a hateful and Homophobic manner, he sodomizes (and enjoys it!!) a gay drug dealer who just saved his life (and who happens to be an old friend!!) in a middle of a death threatening situation, with his five-year-relationship fiancée left alone with the thugs, with both of their lives at stake.It takes a mindless, utterly twisted inhuman pervert in hard drugs to have that kind of behavior in a situation like this. 2.-After being caught in the middle of the despicable Homo act , The creepy boyfriend is RIDICULED by his own loving girlfriend, who joins the three thugs in the mocking and in a small drug party, like they were old, good friends!! Totally believable, Yeah, right 3.- After a five year loving relationship, He doesn't hesitate to cowardly abandon his fiancée in the hands of the thugs at the first opportunity he has to escape and without asking for any help.Not even Jeffrey Dahmer would do that.4.- There are thousands of taxis and Buses in Caracas, but He chose to escape precisely the one the thug's accomplice is driving. What a coincidence.5.- Absolutely all the Police force in Venezuela is utter corrupt, even worse than the criminals they pursue. And the military officers and soldiers are all gays. I wonder how Venezuela still exists.The "acting" of this cinematic excrement consists basically in:a) Point guns to a head. Every five seconds. b) Make rape and execution threats. Also every five seconds. c) insults, cheap drug and sex jokes and swearing. All over the movie. d) Beat and be beaten. 89% of the movie. e) Venezuelan alienated and low "Gangsta slang" e) And, mostly, an individual and extraordinary effort to be as unlikable and cliché as possible.There is also an embarrassing, pitiful and self humiliating Ruben Blades cameo. If he needed the money so bad, He would better off singing.This movie IS NOT a socio-political drama and , despite the film's pretensions to social relevance, there is nothing to be learned here and no pleasure to be had.It also doesn't offer nothing new to film-making, The style is a compendium of Tarantino-Rodriguez pulp rip offs and more-than-exploited post-production Timewarps and Freeze frames, all wrapped in a NOISY (not grainy, NOISY, video gives noise) Envelope. Nothing original.Just a very bad, derivative, sensationalistic, exploitative and utterly low piece of crap.Venezuelan people should be ashamed of themselves to glorify this stupid, alienated, offensive and unreal vision of his own country. I bet my life that most of them never have been robbed, don't live in Venezuela, never been in a Venezuelan ghetto or never have met poor people.They don't deserve to be Venezuelans. They don't deserve to be citizens of any country.Some guy wrote in one of the glorifying reviews that the absurd and sensationalistic Plot is "100% REAL". Maybe He'd like to hatefully sodomize a Gay guy while both his and her girlfriend's lives are at stake.Or maybe He already did it.This exploitation movie is Venezuelan (And Latin American) cinema, pride and dignity at his lowest.BTW, The miserable, sold-out, Tarantino cheap rip off Director IS A LIAR, He has NEVER been Kidnnaped, He LIED to gain Publicity and to Justify and to give "social relevance" and "reality" to his repugnant,vile and UNREAL excuse of a movie.When the movie debuted in Venezuela, He pointed that He had never been Kidnapped. He changed that story later, because of the limited and undeserved media hip.I'm sure that if He were been kidnapped, and the movie were really inspired on His adventure and faithful to the facts, the Homo episode would have been different, something like all the thugs sodomizing the male Hostage. And the latter enjoying it.Mia Maestro shows She can act, is really a shame she was part of this repulsive abomination.PLEASE, don't believe this atrocious movie, Venezuela is much more than that.Is not ONE out of ten, is ZERO out of ten. Less than ZERO.

"Secuestro Express" is an independent film about a common frequent reality in Latin America: Kidnappings. I was first very reluctant about watching this film, but it just came on DVD rental, so I got a copy, watched it and now I know that certainly this film is a very genuine depiction of a situation that is not known to most people in North America. Quite raw, and also entertaining, this film will keep the viewer in suspense and expectation for many surprises.Remember that this is a foreign film, not your regular "censored a... flick". That is the reason it was not shown in most theaters in the U.S. but it is now at your local DVD rental shop.Well, please let me know what ya'll think!http://www.miramax.com/secuestroexpresshttp://www.imdb.com/title/tt0371939 All Block Busters has it.