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by Raul Burriel Published: April 23, 2007
Fortunately, we finally have the whole 13 episode run of Kidnapped on DVD, giving the clamoring fans (all five of us) an opportunity to see the series how it was meant to be seen: on our TVs and not on a small window on our desktop PCs. On its surface, the series deals with the kidnapping of Leopold Cain (Will Denton), the teenaged son of wealthy industrialist Conrad Cain (Timothy Hutton) and his wife Ellie (Dana Delany). But if that's all there were to it, this would barely fill an episode of Without A Trace. As we learn throughout the series, there is a vast conspiracy operating behind the scenes, muddying the motive for the kidnapping. The protagonist in the series is Knapp (Jeremy Sisto), the mysterious expert hired by the Cains to retrieve their son (you know he's mysterious because we never learn his first name.) But when the FBI led by Agent Latimer King (Delroy Lindo) get involved, things get complicated. The acting is top notch, led by Sisto who plays Knapp's tortured and haunted past to perfection. Academy Award winner Hutton's Conrad Cain is distraught father, a rich and powerful man who worked his way up from the streets and can do anything he wants with his money, but can't get his son back. He is at his best when his fabricated "rich man" persona shatters and his youthful Irish gangster core breaks through. Ellie is a role that Delany has by now mastered with numerous telefilm appearances. Lindo's Agent King is tough and gritty, but with enough of a heart of gold to know when he has to bend the rules - or break them - to get Leopold home safely. Certainly, at first every character appears to be a one-line caricature with little depth, but the writers deftly flesh them out throughout the series. They become compelling and, in most cases, sympathetic. Extra points should go to Denton who, as Leopold, never comes off as either whiney or precocious. Leopold appears at times both weak and strong, a victim of his situation yet resistant to his kidnappers. He attempts to manufacture his own escape but never in implausible ways. The series perhaps suffers from its length. The whole story of Leopold Cain's kidnapping could have been told in a four hour mini-series. Had the story not been serialized, a TV show about Knapp rescuing a different kidnapped child every week may have worked better. We first meet Knapp as he's knocking down doors and rescuing one child, and we know he's haunted by an old case, the one child he was never able to recover. The producers clearly wanted to make the show about Knapp, and if the show had come back for a second season, Knapp would clearly have continued as the protagonist. Superfluous subplots bog the series down and new characters are thrown at us constantly in an attempt to build up the world around the main characters. But the drama is always solid and riveting. Each episode is paced surprisingly well and never too wordy. And we're always left hungering for more at the end. Thankfully, we have all the episodes on DVD and we can quickly move on to the next episode to find out what happens next. A marked departure from the series is the penultimate episode, which plays more like an episode of The A-Team than anything you'd expect to see on Kidnapped, but it's still a satisfying payoff for a season's worth of TV viewing. The final episode is necessary to tie up lose ends after the action of the episode before, but doesn't feel tacked on or lackluster. The only bonus feature is a featurette entitled "Ransom Notes", a fifteen minute long promo for the series. If you've got the DVD already, then the featurette is worthless to you. As is often the case, commentary from the cast or crew would probably have been a valuable addition to this set, but given the show's failure, it's unlikely the studio was willing to spend any more money on the DVD than necessary. Kidnapped was one of the best shows of last season, an engrossing drama that could easily have been lumped in with numerous other shows and be called a copycat, but proved itself despite such a potential shortcoming. It's too bad that it got lost in the cacophony of so many other shows screaming that they were more than just "me too". |
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