Sundance Institute
PARK CITY, Utah—Buddy comedies hinge on the likability of their bickering protagonist partners and, in that crucial regard, Kidnapping Inc. falls fatally flat. Two soccer-loving Haitian criminals tasked with delivering a kidnapped man to a crime boss, Doc (Jasmuel Andri) and Zoe (Rolapthon Mercure) are an incessantly chatty duo who scream, fume, wail, and race about with slapsticky abandon. Their manic energy is as high as their competence is low, although what they’re truly lacking are amusing or engaging personalities worthy of one’s attention, much less empathy. Their zaniness so fever-pitched that it comes off as strained and desperate. They’re cartoonish in the least flattering sense of the term.
Doc and Zoe are meant to be hilarious caricatures, but Kidnapping Inc.—which premiered Jan. 22 in the Midnight section of this year’s Sundance Film Festival—also views them as victims of a country rife with bloodshed and injustice (it’s one of the world’s kidnapping capitals). In that regard too, director Bruno Mourral’s feature debut comes up short, largely because it never persuasively posits its main characters’ conduct as necessary reactions to their corrupt environs. After casting Doc and Zoe as clownish hoods for the majority of its runtime, the film attempts a last-second about-face, courting genuine sympathy for their plight. Given that they’re merely intolerant knuckleheaded buffoons who’ve willingly chosen their illicit path for profit, though, that late switcheroo proves even more distasteful than the preceding silliness.
In the early morning hours on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, Doc and Zoe stop to deal with the bound-and-gagged man they have in their car’s trunk, as well as to fix a tire. During this break, Zoe recounts a bad dream in which he was raped by a giant rat—the first, but not last, sign that he’s terrified of being (or being thought of as) gay. It’s not an auspicious introduction, and that’s before he starts beating his captive for biting him. When Doc surveys the damage, he discovers that Zoe has murdered their abducted passenger, thereby putting both of them in great danger considering that their employer has demanded that they drop this man off at 6:30 a.m. so a $300,000 ransom can be collected.