Official Synopsis
Present. Buffalo. The unforgiving winter. A killer roams the streets, abducting women on cold, quiet nights. All prostitutes, missing persons with no one to miss them. He leaves behind no traces, no clues; nothing. Detective Mike Fletcher (John Cusack) is the one cop on the force bent on bringing him to justice. Mike sees the tragedy in all of this: that these poor women are alone in life, and in death. They have no one to stand up for them – no one except him.
I give director Morgan O’Neill and writer Paul A. Leyden credit for creating a very enclosed world in this John Cusack thriller. They do a great job with defining their characters and setting up the thrilling portions of the film with horrific situations that could be believable. The really do a good job with defining the absolute creepiness of Dallas Roberts’ Gary Gemeaux, as he is quite believable as our sadistic serial killer. If he was in a triple A film of the same type, playing the same character, he might be one of the more terrifying serial killers in recent memory. Anyway, that was a huge bright spot (or dark spot) that stood out in the film. O’Neill and Leyden really put together a broken down work for Gemeaux to play in, which shows in the end sequence of the film, which I won’t go into detail about, but it’s pretty intense.
Now, with that said, the main issue with the film is pacing. This movie might should have been about 30 minutes less overall, as it seems to stretch itself out in some areas when suspense could have been substituted instead. It tends to drag on, especially in the middle, as Cusack is trying to unravel the serial killer’s trail, which is heated up once Cusack’s Mike has is daughter kidnapped. It just feels like maybe there was too much detail in unnecessary parts of the story and not enough detail in others that desperately needed it. For example, the beginning of the film developed way too quickly. We find out almost instantaneous that Mike has problems at home and especially with his daughter. As soon as characters are getting some development then the movie moves on to instant crisis mode when Mike’s daughter is abducted by the serial killer. We had no time to get to know these people and get to know the real problem between the parents and their daughter Abby (played by the very talented Mae Whitman). One thing that a movie like Taken did well was put together a healthy back story between Liam Neeson’s Bryan Mills and his onscreen daughter Kim, played by Maggie Grace. By the time Kim gets kidnapped in Taken, we’re already buying that her father has a strong relationship with his daughter.
The Factory really doesn’t create that bond or, more importantly the disfunction and disconnect between father and daughter. We never get to know them, which hurts the rest of the movie. I’m not saying that we’re not convinced that Mike wants to desperately find Abby, but the emotional bond (and characters) could have been much stronger with a bit more screen time.
Again, it’s really quick and we just don’t connect with the characters. Good storytelling begins with character development then shifts to moments and flow of the overall story. If you skip your characters then you have hurt your film before it really began. It’s like not appreciating the dinner and thinking completely about the dessert.
The big plus is the end of the film (as I’ve mentioned before), as it pays off pretty well. Regretfully, it just can’t save this film from being an unbalanced B-movie that might have been better suited for a television release on cable rather than a DVD home release.
Overall, you’re going to get some action and ‘thrilling’ moments out of the movie, but it’s going to seem empty, if not stretched out in some areas.
As for the looks of the overall DVD, it’s a solid compression. You don’t get a lot of artifacts or fuzziness in the visuals, which is a huge plus for DVDs these days. Having said that, I need a scene selection and possibly some features for this release. There are none for either category. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a DVD without a scene selection. It does have chapters, so you can skip around at will, but I prefer a scene selection, as petty as that sounds.
Again, no special features with this one.