Mark Reviews Movies: HELD FOR RANSOM (2021)

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 14, 2021

On the surface, the story of Daniel Rye, a Danish photojournalist who was captured and held hostage by ISIS in Syria for more than a year, is a hopeful one. The final result of Rye's captivity should come as little surprise, solely based on the existence of this film. In the way Anders Thomas Jensen's screenplay details so many aspects of how many things could have gone wrong in so many different ways for Rye, though, Held for Ransom is still effective as a kind of real-world thriller. It's also more than that.

Jensen, adapting Puk Damsgård's book The ISIS Hostage: One Man's True Story of 13 Months in Captivity, and director Niels Arden Oplev have crafted a multi-faceted drama. The film is as concerned with the psychological strain of those Rye left at home as it is with the torment of the journalist's imprisonment. It's as invested in the politics and human efforts of securing the man's release as it is in the mechanics of finding him. It's as unflinching about the realities of what ISIS has done to people and their loved ones as it is encouraging in the optimism of what finally happened in Rye's case.

In other words, the film may have chosen a superficially inspiring story as its foundation. Even with that, though, there is little solace to be taken from Rye's story and the bigger picture what he and others have experienced.

The story begins with Daniel (Esben Smed) unsure about the course of his life. He was an Olympic hopeful on Denmark's gymnastics team, before an injury at a rally ended his prospects. Living with his parents—mother Susanne (Christiane Gjellerup Koch) and stepfather Kjeld (Jens Jørn Spottag)—and younger sister Christina (Andrea Heick Gadeberg), Daniel is criticized by his older sister Anita (Sofie Torp) for being directionless and without a life of his own. Soon after, he moves into a small Copenhagen apartment with his girlfriend Signe (Sara Hjort Ditlevsen) and realizes he might be able to turn his hobby of photography into a career.

He's hired as an assistant photographer for a photojournalist covering international conflict, and following a trip to Mogadishu, where he focuses on recording the everyday lives of ordinary people amidst war, Daniel decides that he wants to do nothing else with his life. His next gig, which he personally funds by selling his car to his parents, will be in Syria. It's 2013, and the still-ongoing civil war in that country has been raging for about two years.

Any semblance of biography or Daniel's dreams and ambitions ends here, as the photojournalist, unknowingly operating within an area that has been taken over by the so-called Islamic State, is detained by a group of militants, declared an agent with the CIA, and repeatedly tortured. When he doesn't come on his scheduled flight, Daniel's parents and girlfriend scramble to find out information about him.

When they learn the fact of his captivity, Susanne and Kjeld hire a specialist in hostage negotiation. His name is Arthur (played by the film's co-director Anders W. Berthelsen), and he is currently attempting to locate and secure the release of American journalist James Foley.

The narrative goes back and forth, between the harsh conditions and cruel treatment suffered by Daniel, played with a despairing sense of physical and psychological diminishment by Smed, and the efforts by and emotional effects on the family, as they navigate the politically trying legal gray area of negotiating with Daniel's captors. Denmark has declared ISIS a terrorist organization. The government has a hardline stance against negotiating with terrorists. Officials won't be directly involved in a ransom payment, but they won't get in the family's way, either, and do offer advice. The guidance seems convincing but proves, as Arthur predicts, to put Daniel in more danger.

By way of this alternating narrative, Oplev establishes a dual dichotomy of emotions. On one side, we have the family's unceasing anxiety and pain, knowing that Daniel is undoubtedly suffering and feeling helpless to do anything about it (A scene between Anita and Signe addresses a conflicting approach to dealing with such overwhelming doubt, and the film doesn't dismiss the less optimistic outlook). There is also, though, the hope of a plan, a legal and ethical loophole to get around the government and the concern of funding terrorism, along with the generosity of friends and complete strangers.

The same contrast exists in Daniel's story, too. The horror is obvious in his humiliation, malnourishment, and torture, as his captors, led by a man other prisoners have nicknamed John (Amir El-Masry), move Daniel from place to place within and outside Aleppo. Nothing except for pain and eventual death seems to exist in this situation, as Daniel's attempts to escape or end his own life fail.

Somehow, amidst all of this torment, there exist moments of unexpected compassion and kindness. The captives form a bond of support, which only strengthens and becomes an act of spiritual rebellion when James, the American journalist, arrives. Toby Kebbell plays that role, embodying a sense of endless courage, patience, and decency. His performance is so natural and unassuming that it helps to sustain James' presentation here as an almost saintly figure of salvation.

Beneath all of this, we also presume the conclusion of Daniel's story and know the horrible end of Foley's. If the story of Held for Ransom is founded upon the emotional clash between fear and hope, its conclusion offers a more troubling sense of dissonance: the decency and cruelty of which people are capable, as well as the trauma within a seemingly "happy" ending.

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