If you haven't seen the even more chilling Dutch original, you should enjoy this suspense yarn about a girl who disappears - and her lover's obsessive search for her over a three-year period. It becomes apparent earlier this time that the girl has been kidnapped (during a gas station stop) by professional nutcase Jeff Bridges, who has just saved a girl from drowning and is now anxious to prove to his beloved daughter that he is as capable of evil as heroism(! ). But is the victim (then-unknown Sandra Bullock) alive or dead? Bridges just keeps the right side of idiocy as the learned madman and Kiefer Sutherland's role tends to dwindle as the film goes on, though he's already getting hot competition from the strong performance of Nancy Travis (as his new girlfriend) before she rises admirably to the challenge of ferocity and a battle of wits with Bridges at the end. A bit long and dawdling, but director George Sluizer (who made the original) has a baited hook to keep us snapping to the end of the film. Alas for Travis, her performance did not make her a star, and it was Bullock that world audiences took to their hearts.


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