B-Grade Amber Alert an Enjoyable Abduction Thriller (Even if it Does Run Out of Gas)
Spoiler alert: by the end of this review, I will still recommend that it’s worth taking the time to check out the child abduction thriller Amber Alert even though my praise will hardly be effusive. The scenario cooked up by director Kerry Bellessa (who, crazily enough, also crafted another, if completely unrelated, motion picture with the exact same title back in 2012) and fleshed out into a finished screenplay with co-writer and frequent collaborator Joshua Oram is a good one. The performances delivered by Hayden Panettiere and Tyler James Williams are suitably intense and emotionally anchored in a foundation of authentic, character-driven sincerity. These are all undeniable positives.
But dang do things go completely off the rails during the climax. Little things like plausibility get thrown out of the car window. It’s like we suddenly go from something like 2018’s The Guilty or even the 1988 Danish classic The Vanishing and are suddenly dropped nonsensically into a low-rent Se7en parking garage situated squarely on The Call (an absurd 911 call center thriller starring Halle Berry) avenue. It’s kind of amusing. It’s also disappointing, especially considering how terrific the first two-thirds of this thriller are.
Part of me is frustrated by how all of this turns out. Thankfully, the majority of me didn’t care. When everything was all said and done, I found I was happily satiated. As for all the crazy stuff? It’s like a weird desert filled with flavors that work in direct opposition from one to the other, and eating that crazy mess is as exhilarating as it is excruciating. I’m okay with that.
I do like the simplicity of the core plot elements. After receiving an Amber Alert on their cellphones, Jaq (Hayden Panettiere) and her rideshare driver Shane (Tyler James Williams) find they are driving behind a vehicle that suspiciously matches the one driven by the kidnapper. Initially following the car so they can give the police the license plate only to learn it’s no longer needed as authorities are tracking an entirely different vehicle, as the clock ticks by the pair become increasingly convinced they’ve got the right guy and the cops are going in the wrong direction.
Events randomly cut to the police precinct to see what’s happening with the befuddled local officer in charge of the case, Sgt. Casey (Kevin Dunn), and the 911 operator, Cici (Saidah Arrika Ekulona), who took the call from the child’s distraught mother Monica (Katie McClellan), but mostly the focus is squarely on Jaq and Shane. As it should be, it is passenger and rideshare driver who sit at the center of things. They are the ones who must let their curiosity transform into determination and subsequently have this determination forcefully morph into action to take control of an otherwise impossible situation.
Bellessa and Oram allow Jaq and Shane to do this within the confines of the B-movie, borderline noir narrative they’ve constructed for them to inhabit. The characters have secrets sitting in their respective closets, hidden pasts that make them open to seeing where their shadowing of the potential child abduction vehicle will take them. These wounds Jaq and Shane are trying to conceal make it believably plausible that the pair would drop everything to become amateur detectives with a knack for vehicular surveillance. It also makes their interactions with one another crackle with a hard-earned solemnity I was intimately drawn to.
As great as all of that is, when things do get silly, it’s breathtaking how ridiculous everything gets. Jaq and Shane become action heroes, firing off guns, throwing punches, and evading certain death as if they were auditioning to be in an unnamed Marvel Disney+ television series. Bellessa and Oram also toss in hurricane blasts of violence, gore, and abhorrent perversities more reminiscent of a schlock 1980s Roger Corman exploitation riff than they are the otherwise grounded and naturalistic procedural crime drama aesthetics they’ve trafficked in up to this point.
Be that as it may, I still enjoyed Amber Alert. It has urgency, and the opening set piece showcasing the abduction is aptly terrifying. Panettiere and Williams give solidly multifaceted performances, and Oram — doing double duty as the film’s editor — cuts things with a visceral kineticism that kept my pulse racing (even when the plot became a laughable mishmash of sadistically vile lunacy). Bellessa’s latest may run out of gas before the finish line, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still worth climbing into the passenger seat and going along for the ride.
Film Rating: 2½ (out of 4)
