Captured (1998)

When Holden Downs (Nick Mancuso) takes his pent-up frustrations, due to a business venture going south, out on a car-thief, breaking his arm in the process, the sad sap's brother/partner-in-crime swears vengeance making getting Downs' car top priority. Little realizing that Holden has turned his vehicle into an inescapable prison.The interaction between Mancuso and Divoff as captor and captive respectively is where this film shines. However the flip side is that everything else just feels lackluster. All the scenes dealing with the failing business deal, are sadly pedestrian stuff. Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy the film overall and was pleasantly surprised.My Grade: B-

Not surprising that there's not a lot of reviews here. When a movie goes direct to video,9 times out of ten it's lousy. ...but there are exceptions to the rule. Captured certainly is,it's not fantastic but it's pretty good. Nick Mancuso (of the 1980's TV action series "Riptide")plays his role to the hilt here. Yes,it can make some of us say "yeah!" when he discovers his car almost being stolen and he knocks the daylights out of one of them,breaking his arm.On the other hand when "Robert",the brother of the man Nick beats up,swears that he'll steal that car one way or another and he ends up a prisoner in a car specially engineered to be a garage "jail",you wonder,is Nick's character taking this too far? That's a definite question when the simple revenge turns sadistic. I had to close my eyes when he got out the hedge clippers or whatever. This makes one ask,who's the real bad guy here? My personal answer,both. You can decide that yourself.The subplot about his legal hassles in building his dream project is a bit dull and sort of slowed the story down for me. It's relevant but not very interesting. Also when the two men bicker back and forth in the garage about their ideas of American injustice that's affected them personally,their dialouge became the standard cliché' (obvious talk) that I'd heard in other movies and TV shows.The sets and the "greedy big businessman" unfortunately remind me of those really dull,forgettable & lifeless movies that they churned out in the late '80s & early 90's. For a movie made in 1998,it seems a bit dated,like it should have been made in 1988 or 1989. That's why I rate it 6 stars.Despite that,I'd recommend it to people who have a strong resistance to on screen violence and just to people who want a movie to watch that's at least half-way watchable story-wise. Also for people who are fed up with crime but...take the lesson here,don't take your anger to "this" level. (END)

I originally bought this movie from a second hand video shop for four dollars, only doing so because I saw that Andrew Divoff was in it. I never thought it would be as good as it was, but it was brilliant. It has a great script with great actors, and even though the plot is relatively simple, it manages to fill up an hour and half without getting boring. The ending was slightly disappointing, but besides that, it was a fantastic movie. Think Misery, except a highly stressed businessman instead of an insane woman, a car thief instead of an injured writer, a car instead of a bed, and garden shears instead of a sledgehammer. >:) I would love to see a sequel to this movie, not quite sure how they'd go about it, but it would be great to see. Andrew Divoff would have to be in it too. He's a fantastic actor, I just wish he was in more bigger movies. He definitely deserves to be.

Nick Mancuso is highly amusing (and scary!) as the jittery, stressed out, paranoid, @$$hole head honcho at Millennium Investments, who snaps when one of those pesky environmental groups threatens to halt his newest endeavor and destroy his business. After a pair of car thieves try to break into his cherished Porsche, Mancuso has his brother install a high-tech, radio-controlled security system with bulletproof glass and steel reinforcement. He manages to trap one of them (Andrew Divoff) inside the car in the garage of his mansion home, really loses it and takes out his psychotic rage on the poor sap; torturing him with loud heavy metal music, refusing to give him food or water, rolling up his arm in the window, chopping off his fingers with hedge clippers and more!It's a little too similar to MISERY at times but a good nasty thriller all the same. Mancuso (also the associate producer) pulls out all the stops here--crying, screaming, ranting, snarling, cringing and gloriously overacting and Divoff is equally effective in the less-showy role.Impressive writing/directing debut from actor Peter Liapis!