40
A focus on a timely social problem paired with an archetypal class-war tale would be a winning combination for Secuestro Express, were it not for the movie's strangely exploitative nature.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
50
Chicago Reader by Andrea Gronvall
Slick, violent thriller that could seriously dampen tourism to Venezuela.
50
New York Daily News by Elizabeth Weitzman
Jakubowicz successfully portrays a country corrupted beyond repair by financial inequality. But the sadism that drives the story is so gleefully nasty, it overshadows any rational arguments he's trying to make.
70
This is pulp with smarts and a social conscience.
60
Los Angeles Times by Kevin Thomas
Jakubowicz has aptly said of his film that "the beauty of Secuestro Express is how localized it is. The more local it becomes, the more universal it becomes." The truth of his remark resonates throughout this fast and furious film.
10
Writer-director Jonathan Jakubowicz does his best Quentin Tarantino impersonation, loading the film with percussively profane dialogue, smug adolescent nihilism, rampant drug use, pop-culture references, homophobic invective, and empty stylistic excess.
60
Assuming the victims' point of view in the type of kidnapping that's now epidemic in Latin America, Jonathan Jakubowicz's Kidnap Express depicts a nocturnal Caracas with tense energy.
40
Too often, though, Jakubowicz falls back on his relentlessly pirouetting DV camera, attention-deficient editing and ear-splitting sound effects as a substitute for real tension, or a more piercing inquiry into the bubbling tension between South America's haves and its poverty-stricken have-nots.
75
There's nary a dull moment in the semi-autobiographical Secuestro Express (secuestro means kidnap), as Jakubowicz pleases the eyes with closeups, sped-up scenes, hand-held camerawork and other stylized tricks.