ianlouisiana Review of Kidnapped

Kidnapped (1971)

"There's a moose loose aboot this hoose."...etc etc.....etc.....

[4/10 · 3 November 2008]

Mr Donald Pleasance - clearly basing his performance on Spike Milligan's interpretations of The Great McGonagall - is given a rare opportunity to air his "Scottish" accent.So,unfortunately,are Mr Freddie Jones,Mr Jack Watson,Mr Jack Hawkins and Sir Michael Caine,who,in "Kidnapped"is forced to wear clothes a P.G. Wodehouse bookmaker would regard as de trop. As a Scotsman raised in England I have no personal agenda here.Everybody hates the English - I accept that - it comes with the badge as it were. Mr Delbert Mann is as entitled as the next person to have a pop,much as fellow American Mr Mel Gibson did many years later,but he was taking the p*ss a bit using big name English actors to do it. It is a fact universally acknowledged that anything more subtle than the "See you Jimmy!" brand of Scottish dialect is beyond all but the finest mimics.Here,that beautiful treasure - house is raped,plundered then trampled over in favour of a generic accent like a third - rate touring company fumbling their way through "The Scottish Play" on a wet Tuesday night in Hull.An honourable exception is Mr Trevor Howard as the Advocate - General,a splendid exposition of the Upper - Class Scotsman,at home neither with the English nor his own countrymen. Mr Caine decides on a "Gorblimey Guv'nor - the noo" style of speech that never works for me.At least Mr Jones gives it the whole eye - rolling Robert Newton routine,no half - measures there. The exterior sequences are competent if not particularly exciting and there is a nice sense of the rugged countryside at times,but much of the movie is static,almost stagey in nature.The fight in the ship's cabin is clumsily handled and I feared some of the scenery was actually going to collapse under the weight of the flying bodies. Mr Robert Louis Stephenson himself once wrote..."Sometimes it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive" - words to consider if you are to avoid disappointment after deciding to watch this version of "Kidnapped"