According to Wikipedia, “Stockholm syndrome is a condition which causes hostages to develop a psychological alliance with their captors during captivity.” If you’ve ever wondered how that happens, The Captor is the film to watch. Or at least, that’s what writer and director Robert Budreau would want you to think, but I’m not so sure: I enjoyed it, but the film didn’t entirely satisfy.
Ethan Hawke plays Kaj Hansson, who holds up a major bank in Stockholm, Switzerland, taking several hostages at gleeful gunpoint. Unusually, he is not demanding money, but the release of a good friend from prison; Gunnar Sorensson, played by Mark Strong. Bianca Lind (Noomi Rapace) is the most ballsy of the bank employees, who attempts to raise an alarm, and gradually falls for Hansson’s charms. These are the three key players in The Captor, and although the names have been changed, the basic events really happened: in August 1973, four employees of in Kreditbanken were held hostage for six days by two criminals; and when the siege was over, none of the hostages testified against the captors.
The Captor tells the story of this event, in a bright and entertaining manner, with plenty of music and style to set it firmly in the early seventies. Bob Dylan and brown interiors can achieve a lot, it seems. The style is actually very engaging, so I was very easily swept along by it; indeed, it had a bouncy sort of pace – not exciting so much as entertaining – which kind of belies the likely tedium of several days in a bank vault.
The cast is terrific; in fact, I think this is the role I’ve liked best of Mark Strong’s (I usually find his style uncomfortably smarmy). Ethan Hawke is a rare Hollywood actor who plays a different character every time, and they all seem to fit him well, including this Hansson. He starts off cocky, knocked off balance a little by the way the people in the bank don’t do what they’re told, and then even more so when the hostages do comply. Noomi Rapace puts energy into her role as Lind without a hint of overacting.
(But I have to wonder… why were there not more Swedish actors? Was Rapace the only one that the American/Canadian team could come up with? Why was it not made in Sweden?)
The key problem I found was down to the writing. There are moments of sharp dialogue and pathos, but unfortunately, these are just moments: we see Lind tell her husband “if I die, you can live on fish”, but we see nothing of the impact her captivity had on him or their family. Ultimately, the script was shallow, just glancing at the juicy aspects of the story and glossing over the rest. For example, most of the hostages get virtually no dialogue at all and we see very little of police Chief Mattsson (the excellent Christopher Heyerdahl), a character completely wasted. And although we see what happens between Lind and the captor she is drawn to, none of it is explained: the viewer is none the wiser about possible triggers of Stockholm syndrome.
So although I enjoyed the caper while I was watching it – the amateur nature of the heist and the make-it-up-as-we-go-along approach from the police – I was left wondering at the end was that it? There were some minor betrayals, but no-one was hurt, no car chases, exploding helicopters, etc… so without action, the film cried out for depth, which was blatantly missing.
If you’re happy with a colourful and amusing drama that doesn’t answer any questions, The Captor may well do its job alright. But if you want to see a true hostage story, I’d recommend one that takes the matter seriously, such as the German Gladbeck (AKA 54 Hours). Alternatively, if excitement and adventure are more your style, the – utterly fictitious – Money Heist on Netflix is an absolute win.
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