Captive Netflix Mini-series Review

Captive (2016)
Mini-series - 8 episodes

Watch Captive on Netflix
Created by: Doug Liman
Rated: TV-MA

Plot
This documentary focuses on hostage scenarios, following eight different cases in eight different countries.

Verdict
This is an interesting topic with a lackluster result. While it balances interviews with reenactment, there are far too many pauses that feel like an attempt to wring out further emotional impact. The best episodes are the first two as they also interview the kidnapper(s) in addition to the victim(s).
It's depressing subject matter that will make you think twice about traveling to countries with unrest or volunteering to help impoverished nations, but the stories quickly become quite similar.
This documentary needs to take the next step and begin looking at how a culture of kidnapping occurs or focus on how law enforcement could deal with it more effectively.
We are presented with a problem, but provided no speculation on how to change it. That's the next step this documentary should have taken.
It depends.

Review
Based on the trailers I was anticipating a series primarily from the negotiators point of view. I wanted to know what their objectives are in a crisis situation. How do you handle the kidnapper and in turn the victim's family? Instead this series focuses primarily on the victims. The best episodes are the ones that talk to the kidnapper too, though any many cases that isn't possible.

Additional perspectives and a tighter focus would have helped. Each episode feels long, and they are, all at least a full hour. The slowness is amplified when the camera pauses silently on a hand gesture during a reenactment or lingers over a weapon. There are too many shots trying to be artistic instead of telling the story or revealing any information. A tighter edit would help this flow better. This slowness robs the show of energy and emotion. Surprisingly all of the victims seem detached and quite accepting of what happened to them. That might be the craziest thing about this show, the total lack of emotion. Maybe that's how you deal with such a terrible event, by blocking it. In one of the most heartbreaking segments, a woman states she did just that during an assault. The series could have interviewed a psychologist to provide some insight on the people featured and the mind at large.

Each episode recreates the victims ordeal day by day. Each story is horrible in it's own way, and I would have liked a professional's take. While families state that governments can't negotiate or pay a ransom because kidnappings would become more frequent, it would have added a lot to have law enforcement discuss the situations. While the first episode included law enforcement just do to their firsthand involvement, the others didn't.

The first episode is the only one taking place in the United States. It tells the story of a prison riot that resulted in a ten day stand off and five inmates going to death row. In the second episode, the kidnapper was a professional, ransoming the woman in the account for twenty million. He went to jail and reformed himself. Three of the eight episodes involved volunteers or aid workers being kidnapped. Episode seven explored the military's attempt to rescue hostages in Yemen, and episode three involved Somalia pirates.

This show never quite connected like I thought it would. I got bored of the constant pauses for artistic flourishes. This is a somber story that should have been told with straight forward shots. It crafts this narrative that's more entertainment than a factual recounting. The stories are purely emotional, not trying to change laws and procedures in place or revealing an unknown tragedy. It's just superficial, refusing to delve deeper into the issue. How frequently do kidnappings occur? Which countries are the worst and how does it correlate to civil unrest? What kind of bond do hostage form with kidnappers?
I'm left wanting something more, more about the conditions of these other countries or even what's being done to prevent these crimes from happening in the future. It needs to take the next step.