Seasoned kidnapper Joe Hickey (Bacon) is the slimily assured captor who assures young mother Karen (Theron) that he's "going to help her get through this thing."

"This thing" is the abduction of her six-year-old daughter Abby (Fanning) from their lakeside home, after anaesthesiologist hubby Will (Stuart Townsend) has flown off to a medical conference.

Aiding and abetting Joe are his lumbering cousin Marvin (Pruitt Taylor Vince), who has spirited Abby off to a remote cabin, and his wife Cheryl (Love), who is keeping an eye on Will.

With just Joe and Karen in the house, he makes it clear to her that Abby's safe release will come at a price... and he ain't just talking cash.

This rather uncomfortable presumption leads to a skimpily attired Karen raining kisses on Joe's torso while she fingers a razor-sharp scalpel behind her back.

"Wow, you're not like the other mums," gasps the veteran kidnapper before Karen whips the blade to a place most men won't really want to know.

As a slice of action, this is about the only thing that keeps the interest up in a thriller that very quickly runs into a morass of cliches.

Bacon is eerily convincing as the sadistic captor and Love adequately peforms as the sleazy slattern while running the risk of serious typecasting.

However, Mandoki loses grip of the narrative about two-thirds in and any note of realism is lost as Greg Iles' screenplay introduces a fistful of distracting sub-plots.

In one hilarious scene Will cuts the engine of his low-flying seaplane so the kidnappers don't realise he's airborne, plunging the aircraft into a deadly dive.

And it gets worse. To carry off a convincingly taut kidnap thriller you have to have tension...and this has got all the tension of an old skipping rope.

Tim Evans