By Matthew Savelloni
6 Degrees of Charlize Theron – Who wouldn’t want to be Trapped with her?
I couldn’t help but hear comic book “sound effects” as I read Greg Iles’ 24 HOURS: ! Pow! Bang! Zoom!t that Iles has written a comic book but simply because the first two hundred pages move at supersonic speed. Too bad the last two hundred moves in fits and starts as Iles fails to capitalize on the potential of his story. 24 HOURS begins as a Gothic passion play centered on a kidnapping. It ends as a routine, implausible potboiler.
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Dr. Will and Karen Jennings have boatloads of cash, a beautiful daughter, Abby, and a resplendent countrified manor. Enter Joe Hickey, a deep woods hick with a madman's gleam in his eye. Joe pads his retirement plan by kidnapping the children of wealthy doctors, giving them to Huey—a slow manchild modeled off the Steinbeckian Lenny mold—for safekeeping and then physically separating the parents. Joe holds the wife at one location while his wife Cheryl baby-sits the father at another. The parents are given 24 hours to pay up or else. Once payment is received, Joe returns the children unharmed and the family is reunited with the assurance that if the parents ever go to the police, Joe will come back and kill the kid. It’s a foolproof scheme Joe has executed five times without a hitch when we see him swoop in on the Jennings family. Joe’s plan unfolds like clockwork: Huey takes Abby to a cabin in the swamp, Cheryl confronts Will at a conference, and Joe remains at the Jennings’ home with Karen. The pages literally fly through your hands. For about half the novel. And then Iles loses the successful thread of his weave.
There are two basic elements of thrillers: mystery and circumstance. With mystery, the object is to solve the crime, to unearth its insidious motivation. The plot typically revolves not around what happens but rather what goes wrong. Think Raymond Chandler and RESERVOIR DOGS as literary and cinematic examples. Circumstance depends upon characterization, setting and tone. Sometimes mystery is removed altogether. Complexity arises from within the characters and their reactions to the extraordinary state of affairs either self-composed or thrust upon them. Think Jim Thompson and just about everything by Hitchcock. These two elements are not mutually exclusive but how much of each an author utilizes depends on the type of story he’s telling. 24 HOURS leans predominantly on circumstance and the awesome strain created when an All-American family faces hell on earth. We know the basic plot and there is not much mystery except for Joe’s complete motivation, which is only partly about the money.
Iles generates real tension between the characters. The precocious Abby and the lovable but dangerous Huey form a Beauty and the Best-type bond. The battered hooker with a heart of gold in Cheryl and the careful, exacting Will parry their respective allegiances against one another until an understanding is finally struck. The most intriguing standoff sparks between Karen and Joe. She’s a smart, aggressive, sturdy modern woman who refuses to wane in the face of Joe’s assault. He’s a sociopath; evil in an elemental way in his thirst for revenge and an urge to punish a world he regards as fraudulent and unfair. Their conflict exists on many levels: physical, spiritual, psychological and sexual. When Karen suddenly turns the tables on Joe, the reader thinks 24 HOURS is really about to take off, but then, inexplicably, Iles brings the story back around and follows the plot points laid out in the first twenty pages. It’s as if he cannot summon any more surprising bursts of creativity and as a result, the story’s second half suffers from lack of momentum.
The primary reason for the second-half malaise is that Karen’s role is greatly reduced. Iles hands the story over to Will and the machinations of outside factors trying to foil Joe’s plan. That transition is a colossal mistake. Watching characters work or fight their own way out of impossible situations is the chief attraction of thrillers. Iles does a wonderful job of ratcheting the tension between Joe and Karen tighter and tighter. The reader is almost rabid to witness their inevitable showdown. But that showdown is never staged. In fact, Karen is only tangentially involved in the final action, which plays like the worst type of s ex machinere-comes-the-cavalry, the-cops-kick-in-the-door-at-the-last-second, Daddy-to-the-rescue, ending. No bond is greater than mother to child and it is Karen’s reunion with Abby, or lack thereof, that we breathlessly anticipate. Joe is the obstacle between Karen and her daughter and to neglect that collision is to cripple the emotional thrust of the novel. Because Iles fumbles the dramatic payoff, readers are left impatiently sifting through a stale climax rather than rushing headlong into the eye of the storm forecast at the start of 24 HOURS.
Movie – Trapped – A Murder Of Cell Phones
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24 HOURS has been re-titled TRAPPED for the big screen, presumably to avoid confusion with the popular Kiefer Sutherland series. The film stars Charlize Theron as Karen, Kevin Bacon as Joe, Courtney Love as Cheryl, Stuart Townsend as Will, Pruitt Taylor Vince as Marvin (the renamed Huey character. Why? I have no idea) and Dakota Fanning as Abby. It is directed by Luis Mandoki and adapted by Greg Iles from his novel.
I am a big fan of Charlize Theron. This luminescent actress has talent to burn and an intangible movie-star quality that compel audience members to look at her—and only her—as soon as she walks onscreen. It’s a rare trait and while the material has not quite caught up to her talent (THE ASTRONAUT’S WIFE, anyone?), I do believe an illustrious career is only beginning for Ms. Theron. Kevin Bacon is a serviceable actor. He is better as a nasty than a goodie. I believe his Joe Hickey will be a chilling portrayal. Stuart Townsend I’ve only seen in a couple films but he offers a solid presence. Pruitt Taylor Vince is an underrated character actor (he was amazing in James Mangold’s HEAVY) and a perfect choice for the role of a gentle but destructive giant. Dakota Fanning starred in the most despicable movie of last year, I AM SAM, but she’s only 8 so we won’t hold that against her. Courtney Love could be a weakness because I’ve never felt I was watching anybody other than Courtney Love. I fear that she could leave her scenes with Townsend wanting. Luis Mandoki has directed such stellar cruelties as WHEN A MAN LOVES A WOMAN, MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE, and ANGEL EYES. Maybe TRAPPED will finally justify his occupation as film director; it’s certainly a departure from the rubbish he’s produced thus far.
Greg Iles will hopefully have learned one lesson moving from novelist to screenwriter: thrillers, more than any other type of story, need to adhere to the KISS principle—Keep It Simple Stupid. In the book, the unadorned but wholly powerful drama pitting the Jennings family against Joe Hickey’s kidnappers is scuttled in the second half, replaced by a unnecessarily complicated series of events involving cell phone technology, FBI agents, airplanes, previous victims, doubtful coincidence and implausible action. At one point in the novel, all six principal characters are talking to each other on what seems like 10 different cell phones. It got so ridiculous I gave up trying to figure out how each person was talking to another and just read the dialogue. It’s that type of clutter that Iles needs to excise in order to move from good to great. Hollywood tends to reduce plots and action to the most common denominator and in TRAPPED’s case, that will benefit its narrative. Judging from the trailer and marketing, it appears as if they are putting Theron and Bacon’s battle of wits and bodies front and center which is a smart move because their fight was, by far, the most robust component of the novel.
On September 20th, if Mandoki, Iles and the principals can translate the helpless fear seething in the first half of 24 HOURS to the entire film and eliminate the excess plotting, then TRAPPED should prove to be that rare commodity: a movie that improves upon the book.
“Characters take action. Frauds take inaction.” – Anonymous
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