Aubrey MaloneCaptive (12A)
If somebody told me they were going to make a film about a bonding that takes place between a recovering drug addict and a multiple murderer who imprisons her in her apartment, I’d probably have told them they were mad. But that’s what happens here. And, amazingly, it works. What’s even more amazing is that it’s based on a true story.
In March 2005, a man called Brian Nichols who was awaiting trial for rape murdered a judge, a court reporter, a sheriff’s deputy and a federal agent before holding a single mother captive in her Atlanta home. During the time they spent together, she gave him some crystal meth – the drug to which she was addicted – but significantly didn’t take any herself.
The reason she gave it was that she didn’t want to let her daughter down. She appealed to the same parental streak in him – he also had a child – to stop him killing her, or self-destructing.
Ashley Smith, here played by Kate Mara, told her amazing story on the Oprah Winfrey Show – some footage of this is included at the end of the film – which also featured a pastor by the name of Rick Warren. Warren wrote a book (A Purpose-Driven Life) which helped her through her addiction. He talked about God entering her life through the book on the show. The film is dedicated to the memory of the four people Nichols killed. He’s currently serving a life sentence and won’t be allowed see his son until he’s 18.
Captive is a film about two people whose lives were heading for disaster for different reasons and how their unlikely pairing helped both of them divert that trajectory. If it hadn’t happened, one would have dismissed it as too far-fetched. It’s not high art – a lot of it is similar to the kind of thing one might see on one of those ‘true lives’ channels on the TV – but you’ll be gripped by it throughout, largely due to the high level of intensity Mara brings to it.
David Oyelowo, as Nichols, is also a capable actor. His main achievement is to convince us that a man who killed four people in cold blood could have a heart. Oyelowo plays him not as a sociopath but rather someone who felt validated to kill by the injustice of ‘the system’.
Traversing the terrain previously charted by films like Labor Day, Captive brings us close to the Stockholm Syndrome – that condition whereby an abducted person empathises with their abductor – while still managing to include most of the ingredients of the straight-up thriller. Mara retains a mite too much composure for comfort during – and indeed after – her ordeal and Oyelowo’s ‘reformation’, if such it could be called, is a bit too instant for comfort, but if we allow the film the artistic licence it deserves it has a strange kind of credibility.
***Good