The Good

A very solid cast brings their formidable talents to the TV realm.

The Bad

Didn’t the people who created this show see that it had limited potential?

When a young boy is kidnapped from a wealthy family, it seems that all father Conrad Cain (Timothy Hutton) and his wife Ellie (Dana Delany) have to do is pay off the ransom demands and they will get their child back. The thing is is that the people who have abducted their child are smarter than your average kidnapper, and they kill anybody who gets too close to them. With the FBI, led by Latimer King (Delroy Lindo), on the case, things move forward but not at the pace they would like. This is when Private Investigator Knapp (Jeremy Sisto) comes in. He and Latimer know that this kidnapping involves information that the Cain family is keeping secret. More importantly, they want to keep it secret at all costs and it seems like our lead investigators might inadvertently expose them.

MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY

Kidnapped: The Complete Series features 13 episodes from this show that seemed to have bigger aspirations. It offers up very capable performances, but sadly isn’t doesn’t seem like it was able to rise above it’s one note theme.

Features

Ransom Notes

Aside from not saying what disc this featurette was on it’s only other problem was being too generic. There’s gotta be a better way to get inside these shows because this approach is slowly getting a bit tired. The creators and the actors discuss the plot of the show, the relationships of the characters, who they are, and this piece essentially walks us through who everyone is. Other stuff we find out is how the cast was assembled, the relationship between the Private Investigators and the Police, and how Delroy Lindo never thought his character and Jeremy Sisto’s were working against one another.

Video

Anamorphic Widescreen - 1.78:1. I didn’t used to care for these shows that were presented in anamorphic widescreen. There was always something that made me think the colors were compressed too harsh or too darkly. I was thrilled to see how straight forward the film language was in this show. There were very few scenes of post production effects or unnecessary imagery. Things still played harshly but that worked in this show’s favor. Also, the creators seem to have no problems showering their leads in blood. It would be great if this style could be employed on other shows.

Audio

Dolby Digital. English 5.1 Dolby Digital. Close Captioned. The audio here was good. Yes, the actors seemed to speak in their usual litany of whispers but I don’t think I mind that as much any more. I liked the almost Tony Scott-like approach to the sound. Things were very hard in that capacity and it was especially prevalent as it transitioned from scene-to-scene. They also didn’t employ a lot of music which gave Kidnapped: The Complete Series, a very eery sense of despair.

Package

Looking like a Miramax poster from the late 1990s or a picture from TV Guide, we get a shot of the main cast members on this front cover with Lindo and Sisto placed in front. The back portion features full bodied images of the cast, a description of what Kidnapped: The Complete Series is about, a Special Features listing, and on the underside of the cover there was Sony’s usual system specs listing. The three discs that make up this set are stored in two, slim cases. Again, they showcase the main cast members broken up over the discs. The back of the cases list out all the episodes, their descriptions, and even offer up cast lists.

Final Word

Having seen this sort of subject matter play out in film’s like Ransom, it isn’t surprising that this show wasn’t able to get past the first season. It had a very strong cast with characters that might have gone other places if the premise for Kidnapped had been stronger. After all, how long can a show about a kidnapping last? I know that people who get kidnapped sometimes stay missing for very long periods of time, but wouldn’t it stand to reason that people like Latimer King and his team would eventually move on? This would then leave Knapp to solve the case all by himself but wasn’t he sort of already doing that?

While not a bad show, Kidnapped: The Complete Series seems to play better in this succinct format. With a run time of 541 minutes, perhaps a mini-series is all this show should’ve been?

Kidnapped was released .