44 Inch Chest (2010)
The Kidnappers: Middle-aged, impotent-rage-filled, cuckold East Ender Colin Diamond (Ray Winstone) and his attendent flock of equally unsavoury Sarf Lahndan✤ chum(p)s, played by a handful of brilliant brits including John Hurt, Ian McShane and T🦩om Wilkinson. We think Gary Oldman was busy.
The Kidnappee: The ill-advised Gallic 'Loverboy' (Melvil Poupaud) being quite thoroughly enjoyed by Diamond's wife Liz (Joanne Whalley).
Does It End Well? We're not going to ruin this one as it's out on Friday, but there are going to be spoilers from here on in. Funny spoilers, but spoilers all the same. Consider yourself warned...
Raising Arizona (1987)
The Kidnappers: Career petty criminal Hi McDunnough (Nicholas Cage) and his misguid🎃ed policewoman wife Ed (Holly Hunter).
The Kidnappee: Local silver-spoon-sucking quintupl🤪e🏅t Nathan Arizona Jr (TJ Kuhn).
Does It End Well? Yes, given th🌄at the swiped infant is targeted by a bevvy of b🔯umbling ne'er-do-wells (not least a grenade-toting bounty hunter with an eye on the black market).
Nathan Jr ends up back in his own nursery rather th🦄an on eBay, so Hi and Ed dodge the presumably-quite-deep shitpuddle they should've landed in. Yee-haw!
101 Dalmatians (1996)
The Kidnappers: Cruella de Vil (Glenn Close) and her🐻 ham-fisted henchmen (Hugh Lawrie and Mark Williams).
The Kidnappee: 15 innocent 🍸little dalmatian puppies. Oh, the humanity e🐻tc.
Does It End Well? Dude, it's a Disney film - they were never really going to end up♋ as ꦯCruella's poncho. So yes, of course.
ꦕWell, assuming neither of the Dearlys (Jeff Daniels and Joely Richardson), whose already alarming number of pets has by now increased six-fold, are💫 allergic to dog hair, have day jobs, or ever want to go on holiday ever again...
Man On Fire (2004)
The Kidnappers: A badass Mexican gang of pro abductors, led by a shady enigma 🥃initially known only as 'The Voice' (Roberto Sosa, r🌄ather than Whitney Houston).
The Kidnappee: Mint🅠ed daddy's girl Lupita Ramos (Dakota Fanning).
Does It End Well? Sure, for Lupita and folks; less so for plucky victim-chaser ꦺ𒁃John Creasy (Denzel Washington).
Leaking shot-up organs like🦹 a human colander, he shuffles off𒐪 this mortal coil in a kidnapper's car after trading himself for the kid.
Which is kind of ripping the bad guy▨s off, re🅷ally, but they probably didn't get a warranty.
Gigli (2003)
The Kidnappers: Work experience mobster Larry Gigli (Ben Affleck) and his highly plausible lesbian supervisor Ricki (Jennifer Lo✤pez).
The Kidnappee: Brian (Justin Bartha), a mentally challenged but clearly perfectly well-adjusted Baywatch addict. (Who wasn't?)
Does It End Well? Iওt certainly does for Brian, notwithstanding the fact that he had to spend altogether too long in the company of Bennifer - he ends up being dumped on the set of his aforementioned 🐽favourite show, which just happens to be filming nearby.
As for Larry and Ric🐟k😼i, they...uh...pfft, who cares?
Taken (2008)
The Kidnappers: The Parisian wing of the Albanian mafia, who are apparently doing♌ a roaring trade in sex sl♏aves. Nice guys, then.
The Kidnappees: Teenagers Kim (Maggie Grace) and Amanda (Katie Cas💟sidy), naive U2 fans following the tourbus to Europe. And no, they still didn't deserve it.
Does It End Well? Not for poor drugged-up Amanda, alas, but Kim just so happens to be the daughter of recently retired CIA operative Liam Neeson (note to movie cops: NEVER RETIRE), so obviously she's mꦫostly just twiddling her fingers until he rocks up.
Well, so﷽rt of. In an understandably terrified-looking way.
The Big Lebowski (1998)
The Kidnappers: Um...well, nobody, ✨really. Germ🐟an nihilists would have us believe they done it, but they don't half fib.
The Kidnappee: See abov๊e, but supposedly Bunny Lebowski (Tara Reid), porn star trophy wife of the titular paraplegic 'millionaire'.
Does It End Well? Hard to say, since none of🦂 the hugely messy tripleꦦ-cross was ever real in the first place.
But, insofar as Bunny ends up safely back home, The Dude ends up at the bow🍌ling alley, and we eℱnd up with one of the greatest slacker comedies of all time, we kinda have to say yes.
Except for Do🐈nny, of course; "goodnight, sweet prince."
Saw (2004)
The Kidnapper: John Kramer/Jigsaw (Tobin Bell), a deranged moralist with the flimsꦰie🔴st of grasps on irony.
The Kidnappees: Lawrence Gordon (Carey Elwes) and Ad෴am Faulkner (Lei💦gh Wannell), a doctor and a photographer respectively.
Does It End Well? One bloke's skull powdered by the lid of a toilet; one bloke chained up and sealed alive inside a hidden tomb; one bloke sawing through his own leg in a likely doomed effort to crawl to safety; one killer skipp🐽ing the sc🐼ene with a wink and a whistle.
Hardly ideal, then...but it didn't quite go entirely t🎃o plan for ol' Jiggy, so we're counting it as a botch j📖ob anyway.
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968)
The Kidnapper: Nervous types, look away now; it's only the fr✨eakin' CHILDCATCHER (Robert Helpmann). Scariest. Character. Ever.
The Kidnappees: Jeremy and Jemima, cherubic lollip🔯op-loving son and daughter of freaky auto-aviator Caractacus 🌱Potts (Dick Van Dyke).
Does It End Well? Being a '60s family musical, it would've caused an outcry had the horrifying Childcatcher𓂃 succeeded in...well, we dread to think.
So yes, it ends well, and a million🍬 impressionable young psyches remain just about in tact as a result. Probably a wise script decision in hindsight.
Kiss The Girls (1995)
The Kidnappers: A tag-team - or so it looksℱ - of masochistic lady-collectors, going under the brilliantly dandy pseudonym🍨s 'Casanova' and 'The Gentleman Caller'.
The Kidnappees: Lots of thoroughly underserving womenfolk, most notably kickboxing escapee ܫKate McTierna🌳n (Ashley Judd).
Does It End Well? If Morgan Freeman's batting for the nice guys, nothing ever ends that badly, as he's made ent🐬irely of weapons-grade lovely.
So yeah, the creepy forest torture-warren where Judd's less escapey sisters are being held captive is sprung. In your face, dandyꦕ trickster(s).
The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
The Kidnappers: Lock, Shock and Barrel, at the behest of▨ Jack Skellington (Chris Sarandonಌ/Danny Elfman).
The Kidnappee: One Mr S. Claus (Ed Ivory).
Does It End Well? Not only is Santa saved from the cloth clutches of resident bogeyman Oogie Boogie, he also gets a night off from his infernal annual chimey-diving rounds, and Jack ends up deꦬnouncing꧟ Christmas as a flash in the pan compared to (what we all surely agree is) the vastly superior Hallowe'en.
All-round win, say we.
Misery (1990)
The Kidnapper: Deranged lit-groupie Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates, on truly blood-curdling nut🃏ter form).
The Kidnappee: Hit - although we can't help be🐠tting probably kinda shit - romance novelist Paul Sheldon (Jame⛦s Caan).
Does It End Well? Most people would say yes, given that🎶 our hero eventually limps away after stoving Annie's face in on - oh, delicious irony! - a well-placed typewriter.
But given that he's already had both his shinbone✤s bisected with a lump hammer at this point, we're not convinced psychological escape is ever going to be possible.
Imagine that as a supermarket flashback...eesh.
Buffalo '66 (1998)
The Kidnapper: Wretched prison-leaver Billy Brown (Vincent Gallo), in a pitiful attempt to convince his folks that he's a-co๊urting.
The Kidnappee: Bemused, vaguely꧟ aroused white trash dance student Layla (Christina Ricci).
Does It End Well? Hell yes. Brown finally realises that it's love, rather than his juvenile quest for revenge, that offers redemption, and abandons his quest to gun down the sp♏ortsman whose missed kick 🉐effectively landed him in the slammer.
He even gets a heart-shaped cookie out of it - snacks AND sex then, can't really say fairer than that꧒.
Cellular (2004)
The Kidnappers: A gaggle of bent coppers, hoping to win back a videotape of them robb🍃ing and killing some dealers.
The Kidnappees: Initially just lustrous school ma'am Jessica Martin (Kim Basinger), but soon they've got her kid and husband as well. Conscꦐientious work indeed.
Does It End Well? Evenutally. The Martins are liberated with only a few knocks and scrapes to show for their ordeal; the bad apples on the fo🌳rce are exposed thanks to the, er, 'mi🔯racle' of tape duplication; and the stranger with the cell phone (Chris Evans) gets to make Basinger promise never to call him again.
Which must be a non-Baldwin first for her.
Fargo (1996)
The Kidnappers: Carl Showalter (steve Buscemi) and Gaear Grimsrud (Peter Stormare), on behalf of co🍌nniving ransom-thief Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy).
The Kidnappee: Jean Lundeg▨aard (Kristin Rudrüd), Jerry's unsupecting wiღfe.
Does It End Well? G♏ood grief, no. Jean is the one real tragedy in all this, winding up a stiff a🧔t the hands of ticking timebomb Grimsrud.
Along the way, Jerry gets his just desserts when police chief Marge Gunde🦋rson (Frances McDormand) finally pins the hoax on him, and weasly double-crosser Showalter gets shot in the face, then thrown in a woodchipper.
Happy days.
