This distinctly unpleasant thriller has Kevin Bacon as a psychopathic kidnapper of rich children, Courtney Love as his beat-up girl, and Charlize Theron and Stuart Townsend as the well-lined parents they prey upon.

You've seen the story before. Distraught parents make desperate attempts to get the child back without being sensible enough to inform the police. And when the FBI get to know about it, it's almost too late. What you may not have seen before is mother concealing a knife between her buttocks when the abducter decides to have sex with her. She nearly has his vitals off, but misses by an inch.

There are a good many other improbabilities, including a motorway pile-up involving an aquaplane piloted by Townsend, a huge logging lorry and about three dozen cars from which scramble the main characters apparently unhurt. The chief one, however, is how anyone can take this sour piece of work seriously. If they do it will be because the cast is better than the screenplay and the cinematography of the late Piotr Sobocinski, who shot Kieslowski's Three Colours Red and to whom the film is dedicated, is a good class above the direction.