Film Review: Rupture (2016)

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SYNOPSIS:

A single mom tries to break free from a mysterious organization that has abducted her.

REVIEW:

Today’s movie involves the original Lisbeth Salander being stalked and then kidnapped by Vic Mackey while the devil from the Constantine movie oversees the whole thing. If that rundown of the movie doesn’t float your boat, then let’s get into the details.

In Rupture Noomi Rapace plays Renee, a single-mother who had just gone through a rather contentious divorce. She’s having a tough enough time dealing with a son who has anger management issues and an ex-husband who’s kind of a jerk. After dropping her son off at his dad’s for the weekend, she makes here way to meet with a friend. Her plans hit a snag when a group of people lead by a mysterious bald guy (Michael Chiklis) kidnap her. They take her to a facility ran by Terrence (Peter Stormare), where they hold even more people they‘ve abducted. This mysterious group are putting their captives through terrifying experiments with plans to do the same to her. Renee tries to escape and begins to learn that there’s more to herself than she realized.

After having watched this film, I have to say that it was a pretty interesting ride. After Renee is kidnapped, we get to experience the confusion and terror she feels. There doesn’t seem to be any logical reason for these people to abduct her. She isn’t rich and doesn’t have any connections that could be used to anyone’s advantage. While her captors never act outwardly malicious, there’s still a menacing quality to them. The fact that these folks have a tendency to rub their face against hers and remark on how her skin feels adds to the creep factor. Once Renee is brought to the facility, you occasionally hear people screaming in the background. Not getting to see what’s happening to most of those poor folks does a fantastic job of letting your imagination fill in the gaps, and you begin to wonder if our heroine is in the grips of a modern day Josef Mengele. All of these elements comes together beautifully to create a very tense edge-of-your-seat experience.

What really makes the movie work is the character of Renee. If she remained a helpless weeping willow for the whole movie, things would have gotten old pretty quick. Instead, she was a clever person who, despite her fear, was able to plot an escape plan. Using a box cutter she managed to sneak in with her, she was able to get out of her restraints and start crawling through the air vents like a female John McClain. You see her observe how things are run and start putting together a scheme to get the hell out of dodge. Having the character be such a strong person with a streak of ingenuity makes it easier to root for her. You want to see her escape, and every success she has towards that goal is like a victory for all of us. Of course, the fact that her path to freedom takes her deeper into the proverbial heart of darkness turns the movie into a nail biter.

This movie has an impressive cast that really give some great perfomrances. Michael Chiklis is always solid in his roles, and here he‘s no different. As the ringleader of the kidnappers, he is a hulking figure that inspires fear without ever doing anything overtly violent. Peter Stormare is great as always. If you want to have a creepy character in your movie, you can’t go wrong by putting this guy in the role. He is always a pleasure to watch, and that remains true here.

I do have a confession I have to make, and that is that I never cared for Noomi Rapace. This is nothing to do with her but mainly due to the fact that I may very well be a jerk. She has what I call the Franke Potente syndrome, where a lot of people like to say how pretty she is when I find her to be the exact opposite. I’m not saying I think she’s a hideous monster or anything like that, but I do worry about what the consequences would be if we fed her after midnight. Now that I’ve earned a lot of angry comments from that awful remark, I do think she’s a good actress with a lot of charisma. She was fantastic in the role, giving Renee equal parts strength, compassion, and vulnerability. The whole movie’s success depended on her, and she delivered.

There’s not much to complain about. I thought it was well paced, exciting, and unsettling. While the ending didn’t blow me away, it still made sense and fit where everything was going. I say check it out.