The Betrayed (2008)

An Exercise In Nonsense

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

The first word that comes to mind after watching The Betrayed is "Wow." I'll admit that I wasn't expecting much from this film, but I was more than pleasantly surprised by the end of this suspense-filled thriller. Amanda Gusack does an incredible job. Her script grabs you in a head-lock, while her direction repeatedly punches you right in the brain. I yelled "Hell Yes!" at least 7 times during this incredible movie.Melissa George stars as Jamie Taylor, a young mother who mysteriously wakes up as a captive of a very dangerous crime syndicate. They want information about her husband, and they're using her son's safety to get it. Can Jamie unravel the clues about her husband's secret life before times runs out? Is there any way to assure her son's safety and her life? Is there anyone she can trust? The answers to these questions will shock you!This kidnapping film will kidnap your heart, hold your brain hostage, and take your nerves for ransom. Melissa George does an incredible job as Mrs. Taylor. The gritty nature of this flick works perfectly with the dark script. In a film in which nothing is sure, there's one thing you can count on, and that's thrills. Watch this movie.

As a minimalist, ultra low-budget (then again, if my friends and I made this with the budget listed here, we may well have had $3.4 million left in the kitty for our next flick), virtually one-room set film, THE BETRAYED sort of commands attention for its 98-minute running time. If its stated setting was Burnaby, British Columbia, the viewer could think: "Oh yeah, these keystone crooks are kind of plausible in a region where the populace evidently is NOT aware that their national guard won independence 141 years earlier, since they haven't updated a name that specifically denotes their ancestors' colonial masters from centuries earlier. Let's give these confused Britons and Colombians the benefit of the doubt, and rate this tale from backwards Burnaby at 7 of 10, since having all the main characters behaving as clueless dolts would not pass the suspension-of-disbelief test for Philadelphia--or Peoria, but who really knows if or when the 21st Century level of civilization will reach Burnaby."However, with their understandably massive inferiority complex, the Canadian filmmakers have once again chosen for about the millionth time to try to foist off the doings of unsophisticated blunderers as actions which become totally incredible for mobsters, computer science majors, and police officers who are products of American public schools. Ten people are shot to death during THE BETRAYED, with the title no doubt meant to refer to how each one submits to his death like a sheep going to slaughter--even the character who has already gunned down two cops and six fellow mobsters. If you asked them WHY they were so blind-sided, their only possible reply would be, "because the script betrayed me." If you watch BLOOD SIMPLE or FARGO by the Coen brothers, you will see that master filmmakers leave themselves an out when there is lots of misguided mayhem, by portraying their characters as hicks operating in the boondocks. Conversely, Coppola would not make a savvy urban mob boss (think Marlon Brando in GODFATHER) stare into an underling's revolver for half a minute, doing some sort of internal Hamlet "to be, or not to be" monologue, when they could save themselves by just pulling their own trigger! Sure, Philadelphia had Rocky, but even Cousin Paulie could have gotten the drop on these Burnaby bums.

Well the preceding review seems to have been written by the director's ex, because this is a really good movie. Excellent performance from all the cast, impressive dialogue and story keeps you guessing till the very end. Am just glad I trusted the video preview rather than their review and it's really sad to see efforts as good as this being panned so terribly. it really is unfair to the makers of the movie.Doesn't take itself too serious and it's kept me up through the middle of the night, believe me that's some feat. The last low budget (relatively) movie I saw that was as good as this is The Mist.If this is a one star out of ten for anyone then the Heavens will have to come down for any movie to be worth a two star for them. WATCH THIS MOVIE ASAP and you won't regret it!!!!!!!!!!

****SPOILERS**** Finding herself-after surviving a car accident- locked up in this bunker-like sound and bullet proof room Jamie Taylor, Melissa George, is confronted by this faceless voice, standing outside, about her husband Kevin, Christopher Campbell. It seems that honest and hard working, at the restaurant that he and Jamie own, Kevin was involved in dirty money laundering activities for the syndicated! Shocked that Kevin would have anything to do with a thing like that Jamie is also told that he in fact had stolen 40 million dollars of the syndicate's illegal-heroin-drug money. If that money is not returned within the next 12 hours the voice tells Jamie her son six year-old Michael, Connor Christopher Levins, will be history!It's now up to Jamie to find out just where the money is hidden by listening to a milk crate full of audio tapes, secretly recorded at the Taylor house, and find a clue in them to what Kevin did with the stolen cash. That's before the voice's, who calls himself Alex, boss the mysterious Falco shows up, with a number of hit-men, the next morning and, with the money not there, has both her and little Michael iced.You can't quite make out what Alex is trying to get out of Jamie in that he keeps changing his story to what exactly Kevin did! To the point where you expect that there's something more to his mentally and physically torturing poor Jamie then what, Kevin's double-crossing the syndicate, he's telling her. The movie "The Betrayed" goes on and on with Jamie wracking her brains out in her listening to the boring and almost inaudible tapes Alex gave her. And at the same time trying to figure out what the tapes tell her, in secret coded massages, in where her husband Kevin hid Falco's 40 million dollars. There's also the added attraction of having one of Alex's henchmen Rathe, Donald Adams, trying to take advantage of Jaime when Alex is outside getting some fresh air, from his dark and smelly bunker-like workplace, and a bite to eat! Rathe in the end gets blown away by an outraged Alex when he catches him with his pants down in trying to rape Jamie when he's supposed to be guarding her!In the end we finally get to see what both Alex, by taking off his hood, and Falco, by just showing up, really look like. Which, surprising as it was, doesn't really explain what Jamie's husband Kevin had to do in screwing the two out of their 40 million dollars? ****SPOILER ALERT**** As for Kevin, the real mystery man in the film, he shows up unexpectedly at the very end of the movie to tie all the loose ends together only to end up making things even more confusing then they already were! Not in Kevin explaining his connection to the Falco Mob but in how he completely underestimated in how his wife Jamie, a whiz at numbers crossword puzzles and the internet, was able to figured out what his real intentions in this whole confusing movie really were!