Okay. We know that crimes like kidnapping and police corruption are common enough in some countries, but can we separate this particular piece of expository trash from the subject it deals with? It's a terrible movie in almost all respects. It's one of the ugliest movies ever made.The self righteousness of the writer/director, Jonathan Jakubowicz, spills out of every frame. Lord, how I hate being preached to, as if were some idiot desperately in need of enlightenment from some ambitious and complacent sage who believes he has all the answers. The epilogue spells it out, in case we missed it during the preceding hour and a half of pain. "The world is divided into halves -- the starving and the obese. And all we can do is take his food or invite him to the feast." Some sort of epigrammatic drivel like that.The message, I suppose, is that the poor are driven to crime out of desperation but Jakubowicz bungles even that. What we're left with is the conviction that everyone is rotten to the core -- rich and poor alike. So much for philosophy.As a director, Jakubowicz is right up there in the first rank of the fifth rate. Some comments, I notice, have blamed Quentin Tarantino for the style but that's misguided. Tarantino was an original in his first movies. I think Jakubowicz has borrowed heavily from Tarantino but he goes farther back than that for his technique -- back to MTV and ten-second television commercials. I counted four shots in which the camera did not move and the shot lasted one second or longer, then I got tired of waiting for the next one and stopped counting. The camera whirls dizzylingly, there are split-second close ups of eyeballs, ears, and gun muzzles. There are split screens. Sometimes the camera is strapped to the subject's chest. We see step motion and whiz bang pans. Fish-eye lenses turn the faces of people into those of porpoises. Unbearable.That's Jakubowicz the director. Then there is Jakubowicz the writer. The second is no improvement over the first. A gang of hoods kidnaps a rich young couple -- Maestro and Leroux -- and makes off with them, demanding a ransom. They taunt their captives. They pistol whip Leroux, call him names, punch his face repeatedly, while they cackle like maniacs. They argue and shout constantly at each other. They shoot for no reason at a couple of whores standing on the street. They relentlessly fog the air with the foulest of curses.And their captives? They may be rich young sophisticates but they're dopers too. Leroux turns out to be bisexual, much to the disgust of his fiancée. After she discovers this, Maestro, still held captive in the speeding car, begins to ridicule Leroux too. She asks if they have any grass for her to smoke and shares her Ecstasy with them. At times she joins in the insults of the gang and giggles along with them, although one or two cocked pistols are never more than a foot away from her beautiful nose. The police are easily bribed and the federal cops are sadistic rapists.There's no balance to the movie. Maestro is gorgeous but shallow. Leroux is a handsome coward. The quartet of sweaty gangsters has a collective intelligence equal to that of a doorknob. There's no one to root for.It isn't that the brutality, corruption, and crime are objectionable in themselves, nor is the lousy picture the film gives us of a city -- in this case Caracas, Venezuela. But similar subjects have been handled before, and exponentially better, in movies like "Serpico" or "Taxi Driver" or "Los Olvidados." This dumpster full of basura isn't worth any more comment. See it only if you really want a reason to hang yourself.

This movie is an excellent representation of the reality that Venezuelans are subjected to. Even though the violence is present at all times in the movie it is done in a very artistic and professional way, without recurring to unnecessary crudeness (the violence in itself is quite crude).When watching this, just keep in mind that this is the reality of people living in Venezuela. Everybody is a potential victim. More people have been killed by guns in Venezuela than in the Iraq war in the same period of time (and both countries have pretty much the same population).This movie was also very much disliked by the government, as it shows one of the many truths they want to censor.Finally if you understand Spanish you'll notice the big difference between the language that the "rich" and "poor" people speak (it is widely exaggerated, though, but a very nice touch indeed), so subtitles are highly recommended. I'm Venezuelan, and I needed the subtitles for some of the parts where the people from the "barrios" are speaking.

As you well know, "Secuestro express" is the first Venezuelan movie to be distributed internationally, and the fact is that even so Miramax had not bought the rights of the movie, likewise it had been a success... is verified that to all of us, be Venezuelans or not, we they like the true histories, without fiction neither nothing, that show more the misery of our countries, and that better shown of the life in Caracas that shows "Secuestro express".It can show what we have lived the Venezuelans in this despotic government of Chávez, How? Showing all the TOTALLY TRUE scenes of the events occurred from April of 2002, like the Massacre of "Puente Llaguno" or "Llaguno Bridge", the gunmen and many other facts of great importance in the political-social life of the country. And to think that these shameless murderers, right now they are advanced to be councilmen, and they can be elected as mayors. (Oh my gosh, in what kind of country do we live?) We also can see the effect of prostitution, transvestism, "matraca" or "Policial corruption", the intense depiction of drug addiction in our society, the extreme poverty, the murders, etc. All in the movie works too well."Secuestro express" is a masterpiece, and not only I say as Venezuelan, as critician too, the special effects with the DV cameras it really throw us to an exciting movie and I can see many times without getting tired of it.So, to the world, Venezuela is a truthfully country, very rich, but as you well know, with presidents as Chavez, we are screwed up and we're converted in a "País tercermundista". CHAVEZ OUT ON December 3!

Were Jack Webb handed a budget to take his sermonic L. A. cop-show "Dragnet" on the road, it might play something like "Secuestro Express." "This is the city, Caracas, Venezuela. Every sixty seconds a person is abducted in Latin America. 70% of them don't survive." The "Dumb-dee-dumb-dumb" that follows would make a suitable overture to the structural contrivances of writer-director Jonathan Jakubowicz's debut feature.For a man who only cut at the end of sentences and photographed everything at eye-level, the glaucomic digital imagery, jarring freeze frames and Cuisinart edits would surely sicken Webb. He would be equally reviled by the lack of law and order on display. Yet even Sgt. Joe Friday would be envious of Jakubowicz's skill with a hammer. His thudding message picture centers on a trio of goons and the engaged couple they shanghai.Carla (Mia Maestro) is a sultry socialite who justifies her poverty-free existence by volunteering at a hospital for underprivileged children. Her only sin is wearing a cocktail dress in "a starving city." Okay, she also enjoys a little pot and coke, which are exactly what she and boyfriend Martin (John Paul Leroux) are partaking in at the time of their abduction. Decades after Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" smokescreen and it's still near impossible for a character to fire up a joint without instantly being earmarked for doom.Their captors (Carlos Julio Molina, Pedro Perez and Carlos Madera) cavort like the Bowery Boys on crank. Violent, upidstay, and badly dressed, these homophobic brutes are hard pressed to differentiate between HIV and H20. Their cartoony machismo, one pig seems genuinely impressed that his rape victim wears Victoria's Secret, does little more than pile on shock.The films is not totally void of shading. A clever twist momentarily transforming the criminals into crime victims and a well-executed front seat/back seat use of horizontal split screen both stand out. Later, a stopover at gay coke dealer's place finds the pusher asking to exchange drugs for thirty-minutes between the sheets with Martin. The reveal, before Carla, that Martin and the dealer were past lovers came as a bona fide surprise. At least until questions concerning a group of hardcore criminals loco enough to drag bruised and bloody hostages along on a drug deal popped up.Even with sub-titles and grainy, rough-edged frames this action drama runs closer in spirit to this year's Bruce Willis blockbuster "Hostage" than "City of God," its obvious blueprint. Box-office benediction will determine whether or not the time is right for Jakubowicz to slap a "Hollywood, U.S.A." sticker on his steamer trunk and book passage.