Captive (2015)

This is the story of that Georgia woman who got the escaped killer who had taken her hostage to give himself up to the police by reading to him from pastor Rick Warren's book The Purpose Driven Life. In actuality its more complicated then that of course, both Brian Nichols and Ashley Smith were 'broken people' and that helped them to relate to each other enough to prevent the crises from getting worse and more people from dying. This is an interesting enough story in an off its self, but it is also interesting that it was made into a theatrical style movie, though I think it may have been released straight to video. I believe this story had also been previously done as a TV movie, which is what this movie feels like a slightly more polished version of. It's also ostensibly a Christian movie, which is why it at first felt a little weird to me that Kate Mara was cast as the lead, given my impression of her is of being a rather sensual actress. Mara is good in the part however, as is Daivd Oyelowo as Nichols, and Michael K. Williams as Detective John Chestnut. The movie is capably enough directed by Jerry Jameson, who has mostly done TV work along with a few disaster type movies such as Airport 77 and Raise the Titanic, so he was an appropriate choice for this. **1/2