By EWAN McDONALD
(Herald rating: * * * )
24 on speed - the guy has only eight hours to find the kidnappers and save his daughter.
When his cute little girl is kidnapped, Dr Nathan Conrad (Michael Douglas), a New York psychiatrist, learns that the ransom is a secret six-digit number. Unfortunately
the code is trapped inside the uncommunicative mind of one of his patients. The doctor must retrieve the number from a catatonic teenager, Elizabeth (Brittany Murphy), before stumps on Thanksgiving Day, or the kid gets it from her kidnapper (rent-a-baddie Sean Bean).
Because this is a Michael Douglas movie, you'll know that the mild-mannered guy in the suit is gonna wig out and there'll be some serious basic instinct and a fair degree of fatal attraction as the shrink works over the patient, his wife struggles to defend herself, his daughter tries to outsmart the kidnappers, a detective stumbles over the crime during another investigation, and the movie ends in a cemetery.
Of course there are holes in the plot, lots of psychiatric mumbo-jumbo, but it's a Saturday night's worth of tension.
Rental video, DVD: Today
* DVD features: movie (113 mins); commentary with director; screen-specific commentary with cast; deleted scenes; making-of feature; set tour feature; film scoring feature; screening room dailies; Murphy screen test; storyboard-to-screen comparisons; cast and crew bios; producing workshop; behind-the-scenes shots trailers.
