Stuart Townsend

The daughter of a French aristocrat raised by an American mother, Cambridge University student Gilda has garnered a reputation for campus scandal. Irish born Guy (Stuart Townsend, Theron's real life squeeze), on the other hand, is a struggling student on scholarship and is of a more serious nature. So, when his Cambridge dorm door flies open one rainy night in 1933, and the notorious Gilda herself asks for shelter, his world is rocked. He sensibly makes no moves on her when she stays the night, giving her attraction to him a basis of credibility when the sex sparks fly later.

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The Queen of the Damned stars Stuart Townsend as the vampire Lestat, a character first made popular in film by Tom Cruise in the engaging Interview With the Vampire. This time around, Lestat has risen from his slumber again, intent on making his mark. Tired of hiding in shadows, he starts a career as a rock star, much to the ire of his maker Marius (Vincent Perez). But the anger of the world's vampire covens is the least of his problems when his music awakens the mother of all Vampires, the all-powerful Queen Akasha (Aaliyah).

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In Trapped, the latest in this tiresome genre, the kidnappers' true motive is not greed, despite the fact that they request a ransom for good measure. Will Jennings (Stuart Townsend) is a successful anesthesiologist with a beautiful lakeshore home he shares with his gorgeous wife Karen (Charlize Theron) and their adorable little daughter Abby (Dakota Fanning). While Will is away at a medical conference, kidnappers Joe Hickey (Kevin Bacon) and Marvin Pool (Pruitt Taylor Vince) quietly break into the Jennings' home and take Abby. Marvin leaves with Abby and Joe stays behind with the irate Karen to guide her through his plan. Meanwhile, at the conference, Will meets up with a third accomplice in the kidnapping, Cheryl Hickey (Courtney Love) who holds him hostage in his hotel room.

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A handsome misfire of romanticized misfortune and decadence, war and idealism, tragedy and melodrama, "Head in the Clouds" aspires to be a sweetly risqué twist on the spirit of "Casablanca." But miscast leads and ersatz emotions leave the film's soundstagey period ambiance as its most comparable asset.

Underwhelming, accent-wavering Stuart Townsend ("Queen of the Damned") stars as Guy, an aspiring young writer and political idealist who comes under the spell of Gilda (Charlize Theron), a magnetically reckless woman who lives for the moment and for pleasure, believing she's doomed to die at 34 (as per an opening-scene palm reading). Passionate but uncommitted lovers at Cambridge in the early 1930s, they meet again in Paris just before the German occupation, where their disparate values in sex and life lead their renewed affair into tumultuous territory.

Townsend and Theron (a couple in real life) are wrong for their parts, both of which call for actors who can wear their intellects on their sleeves for confrontations that are at once lusty, emotionally raw and political in nature. More appropriately cast is Penelope Cruz as Mia, another of Gilda's lovers and a sexy Spanish dancer who became crippled, then turned to nursing in the hopes of returning to her country to serve in its republican revolution.

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Apparently not wanting to call attention to the fact that it's releasing a emotionally exploitive child abduction B-movie thriller at a time when AMBER Alerts are being issued almost weekly, Warner Bros. sneaked "Trapped" into theaters this weekend without holding any advance screenings.

This practice is usually reserved for pictures the studios are embarrassed to have made at all ("Pluto Nash," anyone?). "Trapped" isn't as bad as all that, but it is a film that has to get stupid -- really stupid -- in order to resolve its plot.

A rehash of Mel Gibson's "Ransom" with younger, prettier parents fighting back against their child's kidnappers, the film stars the luscious Charlize Theron ("Sweet November") and darkly charming Stuart Townsend ("Queen of the Damned") as a rich, happy young couple with a lakefront, Architectural Digest home but without much credibility as parents to a pretty 6-year-old daughter (Dakota Fanning, "I Am Sam").

Continue reading: Trapped Review