This film emphasizes the promise Matt's daughter makes with the boy she skates with before being kidnapped in the scene where she comes in contact with her father for the first time again by asking "was the promise kept?". We also see the boy grown up ice skating in at least 3-4 different occasions, and by the end of the movie I do not see him meet the girl. All i see is her skating alone again for the first time. This was pretty unsatisfying. Ryan reynold's performance was great, which made me sympathize even more with him when every other character seemed to hate him without any evidence. The mother was the character I least sympathized with because she acted like she was the only victim, putting all the blame the father who was grieving just as much as her, but also at the same time had to deal with her b**ching, and the police assuming he sold his daughter. It was very satisfying to see the father be the one to find the kidnapper, which brings me to another set of characters I couldn't synpathize with what so ever, the investigators. If this is how the real police deal with situations like this, you wonder why there is "never a happy ending" as said by the the female investigator in her seech. The first the they do after someone reports a kidnapping is waste precious time accusing the person who reported it. Its not like the father is gonna go anywhere, you can always suspiciously accuse him of the crime later, why dont you instead prioritize finding a potential kidnapper while the act committed is still recent and easier to follow up. And even worse the excuse for it is that the father reminded the male investigator "of someone ge knew". Jesus they didn't even go further into explaining that as if it was enough of a reason. Maybe give a backstory or something. Instead I have to watch a poor father get accused of sh*t by a police force that isn't bothering to do anything until they make him feel guilty, which is already being done full time by his annoying wife who calls his attempts at finding his daughter "idiotic" when hes the only one trying to do anything, and even ends up being the one to find her in the end. Even worse, the only damn time they do end up finding some sort of clue, the hidden cameras, instead of trying to using it in any way to aid starting to find his daughter, they immediately go to the father's house and start accusing him of spying on his own wife for absolutely no damn reason. And his wife is on their side! In the end, he is the one who ends up catching the guy, and the wife just acts like this never happened and hugs him with their daughter. I get that the man made a mistake, but don't qct like hes the one who committed the damn crime. Ryan renyolds 10/10, 'protagonist' characters doing nothing but making Father's job harder for him -3/10, no offense the actors who played them very well. Also the really weirdly placed flashbacks were probably not a good idea, but I was able to make sense of them easily; I just feel they served no purpose.

A drawn out story with a rushed ending with implausible, but somehow boring twists. The movie time jumps for seemingly no reason making the scenes unnecessarily confusing. The characters are where I took the biggest issue, between characters that are unnecessary to the movie (the figure skating boy, woman partner in crime, anyone related to the kidnappers never revealed, but somehow expected of us to know) and some of the MOST cardboard acting I have ever seen from the kidnapped girl. It's a wonder I sat through this movie. It's a wonder this movie got the green light.

Sometimes the writer shouldn't direct. Sometimes the writer shouldn't even write. This film is a shambles, a true mess.

I'm going defend this film, I've probably watched 4 films a week for the last 10 years so we get through a lot of dross and have gotten to know what movies are like that are rated below 6, this isn't one. OK, so the ending could have been better but it's not a complete let down and the rest of the movie is well acted. I think the key to it being poorly rated is because it's eerily frustrating to watch which is definitely the intention here, if you can appreciate that then you'll like it as we did. There are some creepy performances and it's a bit twisted in a way. All in all it should be rated somewhere between 7 and 7.5, solid but not amazing, worth a watch.