Butterfly on a Wheel

Neil and Abby have a life in order: a good job, a nice house, a small daughter. One evening a stranger gets into their car and says he has their child. What he wants is not money. Through the night he gives the couple one task at a time, and each task destroys something in Neil's life. The subject is not ransom but punishment. What the man wants is for Neil to pay a price, and only as the night goes on does it become clear what that price is. Who the abductor is and why he is doing this both change at the end. The form runs across one night, mostly inside a car and in a few locations. The tension comes not from the setting but from demands that keep escalating. In his post-Bond period Pierce Brosnan was deliberately choosing unlikeable roles, and the coldness here is part of that. Gerard Butler and Maria Bello play the couple. Mike Barker directs. The film was released as Shattered in some countries and its theatrical distribution stayed limited. Who it is for: viewers who like single-night thrillers and films with a late twist. Who it is not for: anyone who will interrogate the logic of that twist; looking back, the plan explained at the end does not hold in a lot of places.