MOVIE REVIEW

In Jonathan Jakubowicz's thriller, kidnappers' story shows the widening chasm between rich and poor.

By Kevin Thomas, Times Staff Writer

In Jonathan Jakubowicz's jolting "Secuestro Express," sweeping panoramas of Caracas reveal hillsides paved with brown shacks like tiles, give way to views of skylines thick with skyscrapers and then offer darting glimpses of busy streets, finally settling into a sleekly spare nightclub where an exceptionally modish young couple are doing a line of coke. Martin (Jean Paul Leroux) is a rich playboy, while Carla (Mía Maestro) is the beautiful daughter of a hospital physician (Rubén Blades).

That the couple have been engaged five years figures, because their relationship seems sustained by physical attraction and class and perhaps drugs. Martin is clearly spoiled and self-indulgent, while Carla, despite her lifestyle, has a social conscience and works with underprivileged children.

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In the next few minutes, Carla's enlightened point of view is going to count for next to nothing. The couple has been targeted by a trio of thugs — the savvy Trece (Carlos Julio Molina), the brutal, unstable Budu (Pedro Peréz) and the trigger-happy Niga (Carlos Madera). They are part of the "secuestro express" phenomenon that has swept Latin America in recent years, in which a small band of crooks snatches people who seem clearly upper class and holds them for a reasonable enough amount of ransom to ensure their families will pay off swiftly without involving the authorities. The idea is that a quick turnover will minimize risk for the perpetrators.

That Carla is so gorgeous, Martin so petulant and foolish and their captors doing drugs themselves makes for a highly volatile and intermittently savage situation. Jakubowicz is a whiz at setting up an exceedingly tense predicament and then building upon it a nearly unbearable suspense with ingenuity and insight. "Secuestro Express" goes full-throttle; it has so much energy that its strobe cuts, split screens, constantly fluid camerawork are expressive and exciting rather than distracting. Jakubowicz, a native of Caracas whose only previous feature was "Ship of Hope," a documentary on Jews who fled the Nazi menace to Venezuela, is a talent.

The director knows how to rev up his actors and play coincidence and irony for all they're worth. The unfolding of Carla and Martin's nightmarish ordeal is punctuated with bursts of savagery, clumsiness, humor and even asides involving their captors' relatives, forcing the viewer to acknowledge the captors' humanity, such as it is. Through this kidnapping, Jakubowicz lays bare a society in which the chasm between the haves and have-nots has opened so wide that the desperately impoverished think increasingly that they have nothing to lose in picking off the privileged. Jakubowicz has aptly said of his film that "the beauty of 'Secuestro Express' is how localized it is. The more local it becomes, the more universal it becomes." The truth of his remark resonates throughout this fast and furious film.

'Secuestro Express'

MPAA rating: R for strong violence, drug use, sexuality and language

Times guidelines: Strong adult fare, wholly inappropriate for children

Mía Maestro...Carla

Carlos Julio Molina...Trece

Pedro Peréz...Budu

Carlos Madera...Niga

Jean Paul Leroux...Martin

A Miramax release of a Três Malandros production. Writer-director Jonathan Jakubowicz. Producers Sandra Condito, Salomón Jakubowicz. Executive producers Elizabeth Avellán, Eduardo Jakubowicz. Music Angelo Milli. Art director Andrés Zawisza. In Spanish with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes. Exclusively at the ArcLight Cinemas, Sunset and Vine, Hollywood, (323) 464-4226.