Taken in Broad Daylight

Taking James van der Beek who generally is playing nice guys and making him into this despicable example of a human being ... I mean that is some achievement. From him too of course - he is playing that part of course and he really does more than a nice job with it.

Kidnappings are evil - and having the movie tell you that this actually happened ... I can't tell how anyone who decides watching this might feel about it. Now certain things may be predictable and others may seem cliche - but overall the movie tries to make you feel as uncomfortable as possible .. and it achieves just that. It does feel like a TV drama/movie of the week in certain aspects too though, which may not feel like this is something you need to see ... watch the trailer and decide for yourself then.

There are very few redeeming points in this 'made for T.V' drama about a high school senior who was kidnapped from a parking lot in Nebraska back in 2001.

Although the topic of this film is a fairly serious one, it is a huge disappointment in terms of writing, direction and acting. The movie starts out as a teenage high school drama, and ever so slowly and painfully gets worse and worse as it goes along. The dialogue is unbelievably and at best, poorly delivered. The most intense scene was a mind boggling cluster of bad lines, and inane acting, that it ruins any drama that should have been part of such a horrendous act.

Every part of this movie dissolves into your typical 'straight to video' movie.

2/10

A lot of the reviews are moderately negative. I would have to agree to some extent with them. eg - it may be a run of the mill kidnap film. But for me James van der beek made this film very watchable indeed. I've grown up in the generation of Dawson's creek, so that was all i've really seen him in. Except from another good turn in The Rules Of Attraction. His performance in this was outstanding. What i consider a fairly realistic interpretation of a sociopath/kidnapper. But how do i know whats realistic for that character? LOL. Give this film a watch, it may have been done before, but van der beek makes the difference between bad and good in my opinion. 8/10.

Poorly acted abduction compared to other kidnapping films. Was just constantly waiting for the film to end.

...but as a movie, it's simply far too long.

The "Plot" section above tells you _everything_ there is about this movie.

The acting is neither very good nor particularly believable. You can tell it is a true story because no script writer would write something with so much filler where absolutely nothing happens. Even a bad scriptwriter would write something to fill the time.

It's a compelling story and I watched it far longer than I normally would have watched something of this calibre, but I ultimately had to turn it off to keep from yelling at the TV, "For $%^&^ sakes, DO something!"