Genre: Period/Western/Civil War
Premise: A woman loses her children to a tribe of Indians and lives every day only to see them again.
About: Back in 2003, Fox offered Stowe $3 million, and later $5 million, for her script, with Ridley Scott poised to direct and Russell Crowe to star. She turned down what was among the highest sums offered a first-time scribe because there was no promise she would be anything more than screenwriter. — The movie will star Hugh Jackman, Rachel Weisz, and Hollywood hotshot Robert Pattinson.
Writer Madeleine Stowe
When I heard that Unbound Captives was a “period piece”, I got excited. I feel like we haven’t had a good period piece in a long time. Braveheart, Titanic, and then…well, I can’t really think of any (suggestions in the comments section please - and no, I don’t count Galdiator as a good period piece). So when I opened it up and realized the period was……… mid-1800s America and it was about Indians, I was really bummed. For me personally, that just isn’t an interesting time in American history. BUT I will say that the one movie I *did* like with Indians was a little movie called Last Of The Mohicans helmed by Director/God Michael Mann, and starring noneother than…you guessed it, Madeleine Stowe, the writer/director of Unbound Captives. For that reason, I was willing to give Captives the benefit of the doubt.
As I trudged through the opening pages, I was starting to feel a lot less benefit and a lot more doubt. Unbound Captives felt a bit like pulling teeth at times. Although there are some exciting moments, films where a bunch of Indians and Americans are shooting at each other seem to blend into a mishmash of cliches for me. It all feels a bit too generic. Now whether this has to do with my predisposition to disliking these kinds of movies or the script itself, I couldn’t really tell you. All I can say is it’s never good when you’re rereading every sentence twice because your mind keeps drifting.
Tom, 30s, is a language-translator between the Indians and the white man. He seems lost, a little bit out there, a man unsure of his place in the world. He travels with Neighbors, a U.S.-Indian ambassador. The two are obviously close friends. They are currently trying to warn a large tribe of Indians that an attack on them by the white man is coming. No sooner is this warning heeded than an assassination attempt on the Indians erupts. Confusion everywhere. No one knows that the white assassin isn’t affiliated with the white ambassadors, causing the Indians to immediately attack every white man in sight.
Though many die, Tom and Neighbors make it out okay, only to come home where Neighbors is quickly murdered the next day (for his affiliation with the Indian people). Tom, who we already know has issues, takes this as a sign to go on a spiritual journey.
This allows us to shift our focus to May, a happy loving mother of two, a boy and a girl. Things aren’t gonna be happy for long though because an Indian tribe raids May’s village, killing all in sight, and taking with them her two children. We find out later that this raid was the direct result of Tom telling the Indians that the white man was coming. The Indians decided to move first. Oops.
As if that weren’t enough, May’s husband ends up the only man killed on some unrelated soldier brigade. Talk about a bad day! As a result, May, just like Tom, pulls away from the world and goes on her own spiritual journey. She spends all her days thinking about her son and daughter. And though a little hope dies each night, she never runs out. She will find her children.
Enter Tommy boy, back from his soul-searching trip and just as bummed about the world as May is. So it’s no wonder they fall in love and get married. But as old secrets creep up, it isn’t long before May finds out that Tom was indirectly responsible for the slaughter of her village and kidnapping of her children. Tom, feeling the heat of the world’s biggest guilt-trip, takes it upon himself to find them, or die trying.
And there you have it my friends. That’s pretty much the plot of Unbound Captives. I have to say that this is a tough one to call. Reading it, I could almost feel the colors. Sense the light. I could hear the sounds. I could smell the air. It’s very cinematically written. But I think it’s cinematically written to a fault, because the key element driving the story - May seeing her children again - drifts in and out as being an active element. Sometimes they’re looking for the children. Other times they’re not. And it’s in those times where they’re not that Unbound Captives just sits there, unsure of what to do with itself.
Occasionally though, even in those slower moments, there is magic. There’s a heartbreaking scene, for example, when May is in her cabin during a cold winter, 7 years removed from the kidnapping, and all she can think about is if her kids are warm or not, wherever they are. It hits you hard. And we can really sense this woman’s pain. And then there are other times, spanning pages and pages, where it feels like absolutely nothing is happening. Yet I understand that there’s a rhythm to this kind of film that requires patience so who knows? Maybe it will all work out in the end. But for me, scriptwise, it was a little too slow and I wasn’t as engaged as I wanted to be. Here’s to hoping the film overcomes that.
What I learned: I think Unbound Captives reminded me that it’s okay to slow down sometimes and let your character experience a moment. There’s so much pressure to keep things moving in a screenplay (I’ve said this before), we forget that some of the best moments happen when your characters are doing just the opposite. There’s a moment where Tom walks up the hill late at night to simply stare at the stars. This reminded me of the scene in Star Wars where Luke walks up the sand dune to take in the dual-sunset. It’s one of the most powerful moments in the film and it’s something we see less and less of these days.
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