Fox Home Entertainment
Starring Melissa George, Oded Fehr, Christian Campbell, Alice Krige
Written and directed by Amanda Gusack
Running time: 1 hr. 39 mins.
Premiere: September 27, 2008 (San Diego Film Festival)
DVD release date: June 30, 2009.

Pulled from their car after a road accident, accountant Jamie Taylor (George) and her six-year-old son Michael are held in a warehouse, where Jamie is interrogated and told her husband is not who she thinks. Known to her as a local restaurant owner and loving father to Michael, Kevin Taylor is said to be a professional killer who has stolen money from his boss as well as from several other crime syndicates. Given only days, she must sift through the ordinariness and intimacy of her home life for conversational clues to the money’s whereabouts.

The plot sounds far-fetched because it is. I wanted to care more about what happened, but Jamie is hardly introduced before her kidnapping, and much of the early conversation between her and main captor Alec (Fehr) takes place over a tinny warehouse intercom. Ultimately I did care about the relationship between Jamie and Alec, but the plot around them spiraled out of control with several badass killers getting shot, yet getting up to even the score.

If you like shoot-em-ups and characters who are mostly caricatures manipulated into extreme situations, you might enjoy The Betrayed. I just wondered George and Fehr were doing in it. They deserve much better.

–Gerald So