24 hours of fear

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Movie
German title 24 hours of fear
Original title Trapped
Country of production United States , Germany
original language English
Publishing year 2002
length 106 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
JMK 14
Rod
Director Luis Mandoki
script Greg Iles
production Luis Mandoki,
Mimi Polk Gitlin
music John Ottman
camera Piotr Sobociński ,
Frederick Elmes
cut Gerald B. Greenberg
occupation

24 Hours Fear is a German-American thriller from 2002. The film is based on the novel 24 Hours by Greg Iles , who also wrote the screenplay for the film.

action

The successful physician William Jennings, his wife Karen and their five-year-old daughter Abby are kidnapped and held in various locations. The three kidnappers communicate through calls made every 30 minutes and threaten killing if a call is not received. They promise that it will all be over within 24 hours, as was the case with the four previous kidnappings by the group.

Despite detailed planning, the kidnappers - Joe Hickey, his wife Cheryl, and Joe's mentally retarded cousin Marvin - soon face a number of unexpected problems. They did not expect that Abby , who had asthma, would urgently need medication and that her parents would not be very cooperative with the kidnappers. The execution of the crime is therefore increasingly out of control.

Karen finds out that Joe Hickey knows his way around a hospital where her husband worked a year earlier. She notes that the previous victims of Hickey's kidnappings were the families of the doctors employed there. It turns out that Hickey's child died in the hospital after an operation. William makes a similar discovery. He overpowers his kidnapper Cheryl and tortures her by giving her a drug that causes respiratory paralysis. A little later, he gives her an antidote to keep her alive, since his only concern was to confront Cheryl with the situation in which his asthma daughter Abby is. He also tries to convince Cheryl that he is not to blame for the death of her child. Cheryl then allows William to make a call. He asks a friend who works for a telephone company to track down the kidnappers' cell phones. The friend succeeds, but also informs the police against Williams' request.

Meanwhile, Karen threatens Joe Hickey with a scalpel when he tries to force her to have sex . Joe is injured and has a long cut on his thigh.

When William picks up the ransom of US $ 250,000 in cash from the bank named by the kidnappers , he meets FBI agents in the bank manager's office who have learned of the kidnapping. They ask William to be carrying a bug and follow him and Cheryl, who in two different cars with their kidnappers make their way to the agreed meeting point where the ransom and Abby are to be handed over. Joe calls his wife to inform him that he has changed plans. Cheryl and William are now convinced that Joe wants to kill the child. They fly in Williams' small plane, with which they land on the highway in front of the cars with which Joe and Karen and Marvin and Abby are traveling. After a fight against the Jennings couple, Joe is shot dead by Karen, the other kidnappers are later arrested, while Abby is able to return to her parents unscathed.

Reviews

Cinema magazine wrote that the film was "not a masterpiece of the genre", but still worth watching. The staging of the “proven story” shows “sweaty intensity”. The editors praised the "top-class actors".

On the website of TV Movie it is mentioned that the film relies on its strong actors and a sophisticated dramaturgy instead of action. The credibility of the story suffers from the action overkill of the finale.

The lexicon of international films wrote that 24 hours of fear is a "very cleverly conceived thriller, the plot of which proves to be unsustainable, so that the film ends in an easy-to-understand cat-and-mouse game with a sensational ending."

background

The film was shot in Vancouver and several other locations in British Columbia , while the opening credits were made in Mexico . Production costs were estimated at 30 million US dollars . The film premiered on September 20, 2002 when it hit theaters in the USA. The film opened in German cinemas on March 27, 2003. The film grossed over US $ 6.9 million in US cinemas, including over US $ 3.2 million on the opening weekend. In Germany almost 45,000 cinema viewers were counted.

The original English title was supposed to be called "24 Hours", but was renamed "Trapped" to avoid confusion with the TV series " 24 ". Likewise, the role of the girl Abby was initially thought to be suffering from diabetes . However, since the film " Panic Room ", which also premiered in 2002 shortly before the release of the film "24 Hours of Fear", featured a girl suffering from diabetes, the script was rewritten so that Abby suffered from asthma suffers. Originally, the plot was supposed to take place in the southern United States, but due to filming in the greater Vancouver area, it was quickly rewritten so that it takes place in Seattle .

For the closing scenes, a highway near Vancouver was closed for two weeks. A total of 40 cars crashed into each other for the film scene, a truck and a sports plane went up in flames. This scene shows Charlize Theron slipping after freeing the woman trapped in the trunk of a car. She painfully tried to finish recording the scene, for which she had to improvise and decided ad hoc to crawl the rest of the way. It was only after the recording of this scene was finished that it became apparent how severe Theron's knee injury actually was, after which she had to be treated in the hospital and filming with her could only be resumed later.

During the filming, the Polish cameraman Piotr Sobociński , to whom the film was dedicated, died. The film was finished by cameraman Frederick Elmes . A few months before the premiere, the production designer Richard Sylbert died . Actress Courtney Love suffered a miscarriage while filming .

Nominations and Awards

In 2003 the film won the “Grand Prize” at the “One-Take Film Festival” in Zagreb .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for 24 hours of fear . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , September 2003 (PDF; test number: 92 497 V / DVD).
  2. ↑ Age rating for 24 hours of fear . Youth Media Commission (  TV version).
  3. ^ Film review , Cinema , accessed December 25, 2007
  4. ↑ a b 24 hours of fear. Movie review. In: www.tvmovie.de. TV Movie , archived from the original on April 16, 2009 ; Retrieved July 3, 2013 .
  5. ↑ 24 hours of fear. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed October 17, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  6. ↑ Locations according to the Internet Movie Database
  7. ↑ a b c Budget and box office results according to the Internet Movie Database
  8. ↑ a b Start dates according to the Internet Movie Database
  9. ↑ a b c d e f g Background information according to the Internet Movie Database