CAPTIVE & PERFECT GUY

year: 2015

CAPTIVE is the true story about a prisoner named Brian Nichols who escaped from jail and, along the way out the door, killed a number of people, including a judge. As a fugitive, he wound up holding a young lady captive in her home... who, on her own, struggled with an addiction to Crystal Meth and was reluctant to read a famous self-help book.

Kate Mara does a good job in the role of Ashley Smith, but it's the famously SELMA Oscar-snubbed David Oyelowo who steals the show, especially one scene as he does a little of Ashley's drug-of-choice, rambling like he's got a future despite being caged and pretty much doomed: morphing into a hyped-up John Dillinger.

The suspenseful chemistry between both leading actors move the story along; a sideline with two detectives provide mere filler; and other than a tacked-on real life epilogue showing Oprah interviewing the real woman and her mentor/author, CAPTIVE doesn't feel like propaganda for the book that supposedly kept Ashley alive by reading it aloud to her captor: For had this dangerous, lethal, cold-blooded criminal... perhaps shown too vulnerable and docile at times... had not done that particular drug, God only knows what the turnout would have been: for it was during that rambling "tweak" when he was the most friendly and open-minded.

year: 2015

THE PERFECT GUY has a perfect tittle, but the guy playing the guy is anything but... in the casting. Although Michael Ealy's "Glenn Close in FATAL ATTRACTION" performance isn't bad, and he definitely turns on the creepy level where our stalked ingenue, played by a strong-willed yet vulnerable Sanaa Lathan, has to eventually fight for her life, something is missing, and worse yet... the inevitable game-changing "dream guy turned bad guy" transition occurs way too soon, stunting Ealy from proving himself worthy of the title role. Perhaps if flaky yet nice ex-boyfriend Morris Chestnut, more rugged and tough looking, played the threatening stalker, the danger would perhaps seem more palpable and genuine. Frankly, the voluptuous Lathan never seems all that frightened by her ultra-skinny albatross. 

So for a theatrical release, it's pretty average, mediocre, and you've seen it a million times before... But, say, you rented PERFECT on a weekend... It's not so terrible.

CAPTIVE: ***
THE PERFECT GUY: **1/2