Pushed as the first Venezuelan feature film to recieve international distribution, I avoided seeing it in the cinema because I was expecting it to be too audience friendly but decided to catch it on dvd when they had 2 offers running concurrently in our local Blockbuster allowing me to rent 4 films for 5 GBP.

It is mainstream audience friendly and as such doesn't dig deep enough into how terrifying it must be to be kidnapped and held to ransom. The style comes across as "City of God" meets "Trainspotting", too sharp, too hip and lacking the depth of, for instance "Good Morning, Night".

What it does do is illustrate the thin line between good and bad, showing that most of the time it's all a matter of perspective. There were a few too many coincidences in the storyline but thankfully and surprisingly the final denouement that I was expecting from early in the film did not come into fruition.

Good use of Digital Video but strikingly unoriginal in its construction, Secuestro Express ends up as merely an average film flawed by cliches.

Cheers Trev.