Ransom Review
by Scott Renshaw (srenshaw AT leland DOT stanford DOT edu)November 10th, 1996
RANSOM
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1996 Scott Renshaw
Grade: B+ // Worth a Ticket
(Touchstone)
Director: Ron Howard.
Screenplay: Richard Price and Alexander Ignon.
Director of Photography: Piotr Sobocinski.
Producers: Brian Grazer, Scott Rudin, B. Kipling Hagopian. Starring: Mel Gibson, Rene Russo, Gary Sinise, Delroy Lindo, Lili Taylor, Brawley Nolte, Liev Schreiber.
MPAA Rating: R (profanity, violence, adult themes)
Running Time: 121 minutes.
Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
I should note before anything else that RANSOM is not a spectacular, classic piece of film-making, but simply a very well-crafted action/suspense thriller. It is only because so many of its genre contemporaries have been so lackluster that RANSOM begins to look like a jewel, because RANSOM is a textbook example of the little things which so many bad to mediocre suspense thrillers could do to become better by orders of magnitude. In fact, the conventional wisdom in Hollywood -- borne out by the success of TWISTER, THE ROCK and INDEPENDENCE DAY as recent examples -- is that suspense is actually counter-productive because the establishment of suspense takes time, valuable minutes which will not involve a 10 megaton explosion or a flying computer-generated cow. RANSOM is consistently tense because it is patient, patient enough to set up characters and situations in a way which really pays off.
Mel Gibson stars as Tom Mullen, a multimillionaire airline magnate living a charmed life in a New York penthouse with wife Kate (Rene Russo) and son Sean (Brawley Nolte). That life is shattered one day when Sean disappears, abducted by a group of kidnapers who demand $2 million for his release. Tom tries to play by the kidnapers' rules, but when the FBI team headed by Agent Lonnie Hawkins (Delroy Lindo) makes a botched attempt at a rescue operation, Tom concludes that they have no intention of letting Sean go alive. Desperate to even the odds, Tom takes drastic and risky action to put the kidnapers on the defensive, the result of which can only be either complete victory or the worst kind of defeat.
RANSOM begins with the radical premise that its characters actually matter, and uses that premise to build a story which matters from moment to moment. Mullen is far from a shining knight as our protagonist, but rather a hard-nosed and occasionally unscrupulous businessman whose rebellious stand against the kidnapers is perhaps as much a result of guilt as logic. The kidnapers themselves (Lili Taylor, Liev Schreiber and Donnie Wahlberg among them) have distinct personalities, and the clashes between those personalities show the cracks in their united front early on; Gary Sinise, as Jimmy Shaker, the mastermind of the operation, is so deeply embittered by his impression that the wealthy get away with murder that he probably believes his actions are thoroughly justified. These are not spectacularly complex characters -- Rene Russo's Kate is actually something of a disappointment as the wife who does little but sob -- but they are real people, and they are directed by Ron Howard in scenes which allow you inside their heads at critical, decisive moments.
Howard also has the ability to take moments which in other hands might have been quickly dispatched plot points and make them compelling. The story would have progressed without the lengthy sequence in which Tom and Kate realize that Sean is missing, but the tension and mounting dread in Howard's direction are palpable. Similarly, we could have gotten from point A to point B without showing Jimmy's reaction to Tom's gambit, but the growing realization that his plan is falling apart is spelled out on his face. Even minor details like the first notification from the kidnapers -- a jittery video file sent to the Mullens via email -- is given a spark which elicits a gasp from the audience.
RANSOM does have its obligatory moments of action and violence, but Howard refuses to treat those sequences as the purpose for his movie. There is a driving tension and a natural rhythm to the structure of RANSOM which doesn't make it feel like the director and screenwriters are trying to exhaust you with set pieces. Although there are flashy moments in RANSOM, notably a telephone confrontation between Jimmy and Tom which is edited to whiplash perfection, it is notable in its lack of devotion to flash; it is that rare action thriller where you anticipate the moment the characters _start_ talking instead of the moment they _stop_. Gibson and Sinise are both in fine form, and their battle of wills moves RANSOM like a living motor. RANSOM may cop out on giving us a climax which addresses the more unsavory aspects of Tom's character, but it deserves recognition as an example of professionalism in film-making, of what is possible when someone seems to give a damn. Too many thrillers swing for the fences every time up, and end up striking out most of the time. RANSOM is more like a fundamentally sound contact hitter, banging out single after single along with the occasional well-placed extra-base hit.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 ransom notes: 8.
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