I suppose most of us have come across one of those recent movies in which some powerful and smug person -- an executive or a big-time agent -- is trapped by a sniper in an open public space and forced to confess his or her sins to everyone involved. For poor Colin Farrell it was a telephone booth. For the sultry but shady Linda Fiorentino, it meant being chained to a hot dog cart.Somebody in Hollywood, probably with an MBA degree, must have figured out that it would be more exciting if the trapped character (or characters!) were forced not only to say things but to actually DO things. Of course you can't be coerced into driving around the city and humiliating yourself because a sniper has you in his cross hairs. But the solution is obvious. You hold the bourgeois couple's daughter hostage and threaten to slaughter the little girl unless your orders are obeyed at once or, better yet, within some time limit, with a clock ticking away and the little girl's death at the end.That about sums up the plot of "Shattered." Husband and wife leave the daughter at home in care of a babysitter, a stooge of the maniacal villain Peirce Brosnan. As Gerard Butler and Maria Belo drive away from their home, Brosnan pops up from the back seat, shoves a pistol against Butler's head and shouts "Keep driving!," while the camera and the editor go mad. This movie is weighty with messages and this is the first of several: Always check in the back seat because lunatics and murderers hide there. Later, we'll learn never to enter a dark room without flipping the light switch next to the door.There's a good deal of tension, naturally. but some of it seems forced. The husband, Gerard Butler, a tremendous success at his executive-type job (he cheats), sometimes acts positively hysterical while trying to talk about his little daughter. Men don't get hysterical like that. Men face firing squads with a smile on their faces and a glint of defiance in their eyes. They don't CRY. But then the whole movie is slightly askew like that. There is one of those scenes in which a man finally finds someone in a position of authority to whom he must tell his complicated tale. And instead of laying out a logical, chronological, path of events, he becomes nervous, confused, gemischt, and what comes out is a kind of ludicrous word salad. The authorities, in this case the police, of course misinterpret what he's trying to get across.Let me quit this. It's a little depressing. It's poorly written, edited, and directed. The performances are within the bounds of professional possibility parameters. The casting is well done too. Butler isn't staggeringly handsome, and Maria Bello is attractive without inducing the kind of numb adoration that comes with someone like Nicole Kidman at her glamorous best. Butler and Belo look like an ordinary married couple that might be standing in front of you at the supermarket checkout counter.I said it was "poorly written." Watch the ending, in which it's revealed that the arrangement was an intricate set up designed to punish someone for important but still venial sins. Then tell me I'm wrong.

I found this very suspenseful, even as others said though it not giving you a moment to think about - just like it did to the protagonists. "What will happen next?" became "When will this end?" Spoiler: What happens after the end? Guy has been kidnapped, robbed, and more by his wife. Press charges?

Butterfly On A Wheel, or Shattered, as it was dumbly renamed upon release, is a 90's inspired mystery thriller in the vein of stuff like Nick Of Time and Phonebooth. It has such a timeless, goosebumps inducing sense of fun as it strings us along from one tense hostage situation to the next, never becoming too silly or over the top. Gerard Butler plays Neill Randall, an advertisement exec and family man. Him and his wife Abby (Maria Bello) are headed out together in the car, suddenly find themselves held at gunpoint by the mysterious Tom Ryan (Pierce Brosnan), who was hiding in their backseat. He informs them that he has kidnapped their daughter, and starts to make increasingly ridiculous and seemingly arbitrary demands of them, leading them on a bizarre spree of wanton self destructiveness across Toronto. For much of the film we have no idea who Ryan is or why he's tormenting them, but when the incredibly rewarding reveal happens, it adds so much to Brosnan's already fantastic performance. He's an actor who's really been making bold choices in the last ten years and showing talent I never thought him capable of. Here he's a dangerous lunatic, who gradually shows a layer of pain underneath that's spurred him on in his quest. Butler and Bello are great as well, frantic and frenzied as the couple stuck in this night,are, and Callum Keith Rennie has a nice cameo as a confused detective. This is just a solid, well orchestrated thriller with a sense of grandiose purpose aided by the crisp cinematography and intense score, wrapped in a nice genre package, and above all, some truly surprising plot twists.

BUTTERFLY ON A WHEEL is one of those twisty-turny thrillers that lives for its next revelation. Unfortunately, it's also a fairly predictable piece of film-making, content to act as a weak reimagining of THE GAME for the most part, with a little bit of DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE thrown in. In essence, Gerard Butler and Maria Bello are the happily married couple who find themselves at the mercy of a sinister kidnapper, played by Pierce Brosnan.My first thought was that Brosnan can't play a villain, and I was right; he's way too sympathetic to be even slightly intimidating. The other characters aren't much better, either; Bello seems to be repeating her role from A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE, to diluted effect, while Butler is too gung-ho and action man-y to convince as the trapped and hounded family guy (he was much more effective as the villain himself in LAW ABIDING CITIZEN).We're left with a film that keeps you watching, although it can hardly be called entertaining. Most of the time, the twists are so well choreographed, and Brosnan's character is so calculating, that you can predict what will happen long before it actually does. This type of film has been done too many times to really create much impact these days, and William Morrissey's script doesn't have the oomph that it needs to truly shock or provoke. Add in indifferent direction and you have a rather bland and forgettable movie; nice to see THE X-FILES' Nicholas Lea in a supporting role, though.