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Ransom
The son of a successful airline owner is kidnapped. And instead of giving the kidnappers the ransom, the father appears on the TV news and unexpectedly turns the tables on them, by offering the amount as a bounty on their leader.
5 August 1962, Quincy, Massachusetts, USA
4 October 1967, San Francisco, California, USA
24 July 1940, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA
10 January 1961, New York City, New York, USA
July 23, 1953 in Hamilton, Ohio, USA
January 22, 2014
Howard directs for speed and force. The movie moves so quickly it yanks you by too many niggling doubts and the action scenes are so good that you wonder why Opie hasn't shown this much vicious pizazz before.
January 22, 2014
A slick, slam-bang thriller about a business tycoon's frenzied efforts to get back his kidnapped son, Ransom is meant to divert and entertain. It does.
January 22, 2014
That's interesting stuff, but it doesn't play out with a lot of smarts. And the opportunity to end Ransom on a creepy note of unpredictability is forsaken for the usual glass-shattering, bullets-flying finale.
January 22, 2014
Ransom benefits handsomely from a story that remains compellingly believable, even as the plot twists become more baroque. Be warned, though, that Ransom is a violent film, with bloody shootouts that will not be easy to watch.
January 22, 2014
Mel Gibson and Rene Russo put an edgy 1990s spin on the roles originally played by Glenn Ford and Donna Reed.
January 22, 2014
There are more climaxes in here than in a Swedish blue movie. This is not to say you won't be thrilled, charged up and put through the ringer at times, but your intelligence will need to be shoved under your seat like warm, flat soda.
January 22, 2014
By the time Tom Mullen has turned into an action superhero in a clumsy climax, Ransom has run out of ideas, and we've lost track of what we felt about a father's frantic efforts to save his son.
January 22, 2014
With a mechanical movie like this, filmmakers -- male or female -- can't take chances. Howard and company are hostages to their own conception.
January 22, 2014
Ron Howard has directed the action smoothly and efficiently, but be warned that there's a great deal of hard-hitting violence.
January 22, 2014
Ransom is more cleverly conceived than most run-of-the-mill Hollywood exploitation thrillers, and for a while appears headed to a memorable, richly ironic conclusion.
January 22, 2014
The special nature of this story is its many climaxes that border on false endings and also how Gibson's character responds to the ransom demand of $2 million.... it is Gibson who sells us on it and sells it well.
January 22, 2014
As is often the case, the scumbags are far more interesting than the good guys.
