Detained (2024) Film Review
The secret to making a good thriller is balance. A well-designed film of the genre must grab you from the beginning, trap you with a riveting plot that arouses the viewer to use their imagination, and make you care for the characters who are most likely going through something horrible. Anything beyond that is helpful if well applied, but the basics of an effective thriller film are not a secret. It’s all about writing something good.
In Detained, Rebecca is a mysterious stranger who wakes in a police station. She’s being interrogated about events she doesn’t remember. She’s bruised, her hands have traces of blood, and she’s afraid she might have hurt someone in a hit-and-run.
However, the detectives interrogating her constantly disagree and obviously play the roles of good cop and bad cop. There’s something off about her arrest, and she discovers it when people start getting killed. In reality, the people holding her are actually planning to steal from her in the most elaborate plan ever devised.
I found it challenging to connect with Felipe Mucci‘s Detained. The film is a carefully designed thriller that stars an unbeatable cast. The problem is that its convoluted story is more complicated than it needs to be. Several twists and turns become tiresome halfway through when the film becomes a bit predictable (a repetitive question about who’s who), and honestly, I stopped caring. But no, Detained is not a bad film. It’s just an obvious iteration of a concept we’ve seen in the past that refreshes itself with a finely tuned cast.
Detained tries to be clever with a plot that I didn’t connect with and characters that I felt could have used better development. Nevertheless, the execution is anything but mediocre. There’s a good film inside a final cut that could have used better editing to prevent predictability and to make the plot friendlier. Abbie Cornish, in the lead, is good enough to face an entire group and be believable when it’s time to play the victim as well as the mastermind. Laz Alonso (The Boys) does an excellent job of playing a morally corrupt man and the main antagonist. The rest of the cast remains in a secondary backdrop, but Breeda Wool stands out as the best performer in the film. If only she’d been given more screen time.
Detained calls for guessing, which bodes well for the thriller, as this keeps the audience constantly engaged. But they will probably solve the conflict too soon. After that, the film becomes a confirmation of an idea that doesn’t pose any challenge and even subjects the characters to quick disposal. We know Rebecca will triumph because she’s obviously the mysterious figure everyone keeps mentioning (in a sort of Keyser Söze moment that the film proudly uses).
There’s no doubting the talent behind the camera. Detained is beautifully shot and well-acted. But that’s not enough to save it from being a forgettable film with a multilayered plot we’re supposed to care about. Instead, it will make you grab your phone to zone out too often.
