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Ryan Reynolds film booed at Cannes

Written by . Published: May 20 2014

Ryan Reynolds' new film The Captive has been savaged by critics following its premiere at the Cannes International Film Festival in France over the weekend (16-18May14).


The psychological thriller, co-written and directed by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Atom Egoyan, stars Reynolds as a distraught father searching desperately for his young daughter eight years after she is abducted from his truck.


The movie was screened in competition on Friday (16May14), but attendees at the prestigious film festival were not impressed by the offering and booed the picture at the end of the premiere.


Reviews of The Captive reflected the negative reception of the film, with Variety's Justin Chang branding it a "ludicrous abduction thriller that finds a once-great filmmaker slipping into previously unentered realms of self-parody".


The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw also lambasted the project as "another one-star turkey", criticizing the "appalling acting" by the girl's abductor, played by Kevin Durand, and a police officer portrayed by Rosario Dawson, and concluding, "Sadly, Egoyan's film is simply a tangled and conceited mess".


The Los Angeles Times' reviewer Steven Zeitchik echoed those sentiments in an article titled, "Atom Egoyan's The Captive performs a self-abduction", claiming the "wild plots and conspiracies... wouldn't be out of place in the most fantastical spy novel".


However, Egoyan has at least received some good news - shortly before the premiere, he learned the film had been picked up by bosses at distributor A24 for release later this year (14).

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