Detained

by Daniel Baldwin

Midbudget movies used to be Hollywood’s bread and butter for decades, especially procedural thrillers. They were all the rage in the ‘90s and ‘00s in particular. The Silence of the Lambs. Kiss the Girls. The Usual Suspects. Double Jeopardy. Primal Fear. The Firm. Twisted. If it involved Thomas Harris, John Grisham, and/or Ashley Judd, it was practically a guaranteed smash.

At some point in the 2010s, studios drifted away from such fare, in favor of a core focus on blockbuster franchises. Fans of such films were forced to get their fix almost exclusively from network television and low budget independent features. They filled the void that Hollywood left behind and one of the latest entries taking up residence in that gap is Detained.

Co-writer/director Felipe Mucci’s Detained centers around a confused and disoriented woman (Abbie Cornish) who awakens in a rundown police station. She doesn’t know why she is there and cannot remember what has happened to her recently. The two detectives (Laz Alonso, Moon Bloodgood) that are interrogating her are not much help. They’re more interested in beating around the bush and playing mind games with her to see if they can luck into a confession. What follows is a conversational game of cat & mouse between not only our lead and the detectives, but the other denizens of the dilapidated jail as well. Who will come out ahead as secrets are revealed and alliances are shifted? Well, you’ll have to watch it for yourself to find that out.

While Detained might fill a cinematic void created by bad Hollywood decisionmaking, it does not fill it well. Visually, the film is in line with many of the television procedurals within the genre: well-made, but very paint-by-numbers. It is also punching above its weight in the casting department, which helps smooth over a lot of its dialogue deficiencies.

Unfortunately, not even the likes of Cornish, Alonso, Bloodgood, or the ever-underrated Breeda Wool can overcome a narrative that is chock full of nearly every single twisty-turny mystery cliché imaginable. Even the most dedicated fan of this subgenre is likely to be five steps ahead of the story throughout the film’s running time. What is meant to be an engaging thriller that keeps viewers guessing is far likelier to have them checking the time to see how soon it will wrap-up.