Rapt (2011)

Critic Reviews

• Mark Feeney, Boston Globe

  "Rapt'' is smooth, cool, and efficient. It's a movie with very little wasted motion - or, for much of its length, wasted emotion.

• Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

  What lends "Rapt" its fascination is that it represents such a dramatic fall from grace for its hero.

• Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times

  "Rapt" fuses strands of dramatic tension in a shrewd enough way that it even saves its sharpest cuts for the kidnapping's aftermath, when a well-heeled life laid bare must reconcile with a much different form of enforced solitude.

• Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle

  What distinguishes "Rapt" from other kidnapping movies is that, virtually as soon as he is abducted, details of his life start coming out.

• Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com

  Both a compelling character study and a handsomely mounted procedural, at various times suggesting Hitchcock, his French acolyte Claude Chabrol, the sadistic TV series "24" and the action movies of Michael Mann.

• V.A. Musetto, New York Post

  It features pulse-quickening chases as well as political intrigue.

• Michael C. Walsh, Boston Phoenix

  Belvaux, who wrote the script, defies genre expectations at every turn while still providing apt doses of tension and depravity.

• Laura Clifford, Reeling Reviews

  [Belvaux'] latest isn't the thriller/policier one might expect, but instead is a tantalizing look at his own kind of 'man who wasn't there.'

• Brent Simon, Shockya.com

  A slick, inventive and grippingFrench kidnap drama which doesn't so much deliver an adrenaline shot of nervy thrills as steadily ooze disquieting tension over the course of its two-hour running time.

• Jules Brenner, Cinema Signals

  The unexpected territory Belvaux takes us in preserves our rapt attention to the bitter end.

• Kelly Vance, East Bay Express

  The large supporting cast gives writer-director Lucas Belvaux's screenplay a much eerier tone than would have been the case with a simple procedural cops 'n' robbers story.

• Cole Smithey, ColeSmithey.com

  This is what it looks and feels like when the rich and powerful are brought low. "Rapt" lets you savor every second.

• Mike Scott, Times-Picayune

  The kind of film that serves as rigid, nicely paced entertainment during its two-hour running time, then can be counted on to jump-start conversation on the drive home.

• Marcy Dermansky, About.com

  For two rapt hours, I also felt extremely fortunate not to be a rich and powerful industrialist.

• Christopher Null, Filmcritic.com

  For a film so enamored of chicanery, Rapt is refreshingly told in linear fashion

• Sam Adams, AV Club

  While the back-and-forth between various parties grows tiresome through repetition, Rapt rallies with a lengthy epilogue in which the aftermath of Attal's ordeal proves more draining than the physical privation that preceded it.

• Keith Uhlich, Time Out New York

  Belvaux's tension-building setup is stellar; the follow-through, less so.

Read all 17 critic reviews