Metacritic reviews

The constant threat of violence and rape is difficult to endure, but the unpredictable Secuestro Express is more than just a dizzying thrill ride laced with small doses of pitch-black comic relief.

There's nary a dull moment in the semi-autobiographical Secuestro Express (secuestro means kidnap), as Jakubowicz pleases the eyes with closeups, sped-up scenes, hand-held camerawork and other stylized tricks.

This is pulp with smarts and a social conscience.

Assuming the victims' point of view in the type of kidnapping that's now epidemic in Latin America, Jonathan Jakubowicz's Kidnap Express depicts a nocturnal Caracas with tense energy.

Jakubowicz has aptly said of his film that "the beauty of Secuestro Express is how localized it is. The more local it becomes, the more universal it becomes." The truth of his remark resonates throughout this fast and furious film.

Slick, violent thriller that could seriously dampen tourism to Venezuela.

Jakubowicz successfully portrays a country corrupted beyond repair by financial inequality. But the sadism that drives the story is so gleefully nasty, it overshadows any rational arguments he's trying to make.

A focus on a timely social problem paired with an archetypal class-war tale would be a winning combination for Secuestro Express, were it not for the movie's strangely exploitative nature.

Too often, though, Jakubowicz falls back on his relentlessly pirouetting DV camera, attention-deficient editing and ear-splitting sound effects as a substitute for real tension, or a more piercing inquiry into the bubbling tension between South America's haves and its poverty-stricken have-nots.

Writer-director Jonathan Jakubowicz does his best Quentin Tarantino impersonation, loading the film with percussively profane dialogue, smug adolescent nihilism, rampant drug use, pop-culture references, homophobic invective, and empty stylistic excess.