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3 months ago

Trap

a review by CinemaSerf

Well the best bits of this are most definitely in the trailers! "Cooper" (Josh Hartnett) takes his daughter "Riley" (Ariel Donoghue) to see a "Lady Raven" (Saleka Shyamalan) concert only to find that when they are in the arena, the feds descend on the place like a ton of bricks and thanks to some secret information obtained from the guy who sells the T-shirts, we discover that it's all an elaborate trap to ensnare the "Butcher". As the name suggests, he's a brutal serial-chopper whom they know is at the concert. With the net tightening, we begin realise quickly who the identity of the murderer is and so now have to sit through an increasingly preposterous hundred minutes of cat and mouse with Hayley Mills hoping to catch her man. At times this does generate a bit of menace as he sees the openings to flee being systematically closed in front of him, and with his enthusiastic daughter in tow, his options are increasingly limited but in the end it's all peters out into a rather ridiculous ending that I found rather weak, implausible and disappointingly unoriginal. Hartnett just hasn't the manner to convince as the baddie and there's way too much concert-style material that suggests Miss Shyamalan asked her dad if she could have a film for Christmas. Too long and too feeble, sorry.