This review is of the TV-14 edited version of the film. All thoughts below should be addressed as such as a review of the unedited version would be more negative

It’s time for a film about trying to stop the ultimate evil, a human trafficking ring targeting kids. As you can expect it makes for a pretty intense film since the stakes are super high but unfortunately the film never ends up being really solid. The villains are naturally just here to advance the plot but the main heroine fumbles the bag a few times and the story isn’t even narratively solid. There are massive plot holes here.

So the film starts off by introducing us to Karla who has had a tough time managing things. She split up from her husband who is now with a super successful doctor which is making court proceeding difficult since he wants full custody of their kid. Karla is trying to fight this off but then while at the park, her kid is kidnapped while at a crowded event. She manages to see the one who did this and gives chase but how can she stop him?

The actual kidnapping is the part that you have to handle the most carefully because the timeline has to make sense. Yes, people get kidnapped from public spots so that can work but the film writes itself into a corner early on. Karla picks a spot near the front of the show and only walks a few steps away to make her call. Why turn her back to the kid? We call that plot convenience! However, she was still very close and was in verbal contact with him the whole time with the whole marco polo stuff. So what’s the problem?

Later on we get a flashback of what happened with the villains having an extended talk with the kid as they trick him over to the car. Somehow Karla is no longer within visual view which is how the villains’ scheme works. So it shouldn’t have worked from the jump since she was super close and also the length of their conversation doesn’t match with how short Karla’s call was from the last marco polo test. I thought the film was gonna try and do something clever with the kid’s recorder and have it be the one saying marco polo but that’s not the case as we find it on a nearby bench where it had a different recording.

The film knocking itself out right at the jump is pretty bad. Okay so from there we have a high speed chase with the cars driving everywhere and I’m always skeptical how much you can actually do that with how many cars are on the roads nowadays. Still, Karla keeps up fairly well but eventually the villain tells her to leave or he’ll bump off the kid. So she leaves and hopes she can find him again. She does but that’s pretty lucky. So here’s my thing, you can’t let the villain get away like this. It’s similar to the classic hostage situation. “Get into the car or I’m gonna murder you”.

People forget this but dying is certainly not the worst thing in the world relative to what the villains are planning. In fact if the villain has a gun, it’s better to make a move right away because if you die at least it’ll be relatively quick with the bullet. You might even get the gun and live. Similar case here. If he gets away with the kid, the kid’s going to wish he was dead later on. You are obligated to continue pursuit and yeah there’s a very real chance that the kid will die which is a super hard decision to make. You are sparing him the future suffering though which is what you have to remember.

So yeah you can’t just get off the highway there. Ah well, eventually she finds him and then it’s time for round 2. So he gets out of the car with his knife and makes some more threats. So Karla…tosses him a purse with access to $10,000 in funds? The first problem with this is when you give the money up front like that then there is no incentive for the villain to actually honor his end of the bargain. He’s just gonna keep it. Also, this was her chance to just ram him with the car. With the main villain out of the way there would just be one villain left.

Instead she lets the other girl get in the car and surprise…the villainess tries murdering Karla. Karla gets extremely lucky here and fends her off except…she doesn’t finish the villain off? So the villain heads home for a future showdown. The whole movie I’m just shaking my head at this point. You’ve gotta be ruthless with these villains and show them that they can’t mess with you. They will be on a one way trip to oblivion with you.

Karla’s final big miss for me is when she gets to the villain’s base. The kid is somewhere around here so she just needs to find him. So what Karla does is put her big shotgun on the kitchen table and then starts hiding when the villainess returns. This allows the villain to grab the gun and reload it with ammo…..cmonnnnnnnnn. Also, this lady isn’t exactly in fighting shape. Karla just needs to end her here while extracting some information and then that’s it. Getting the info is probably risky though so just bump her off and find the kid yourself.

Karla takes way too passive of an approach to the entire film and gets super lucky the whole time as a result. You’ll be second guessing all of her decisions here. I’m not gonna put much blame on the kid in this case because that’s sort of missing the point here. The kids are so young that they aren’t able to help out much at all. It’s really Karla’s job to take over and save the day. Of course she ends up doing well but I thought that her plans and tactics needed a whole lot of more work.

Overall, This isn’t really my kind of film. It’s certainly not intense enough to get the blood pumping and there isn’t really much of a character cast. The villains are just two psychos who barely even get names since that part’s not important. They’re just evil and serve as the antagonists. Karla’s a nice person and works well as the lead although I would have liked to have seen her do a bit more in the situations I mentioned above. There was definitely ample opportunity to bump the villains off earlier. Some scenes like the cop being oblivious as he’s taken down or the hellocopters flagging the wrong car also will have you scratching your head but those scenes are so over the top that you barely take them seriously anyway. You’re not going to have a lot of fun with this film which definitely hurts in the end, there’s not much reason to ever rewatch it for example.

Overall 3/10