Dale (Teresa Palmer) is a stripper with a cocky attitude. Her boyfriend is Ron (Travis Fimmel) who sports a hair trigger and a CV with a body count. Wanted, the lovers hole up in a mansion, and take hostage its rich, agoraphobic owner, Andrew (Stephen Moyer). Dave Warner’s intriguing script folds together two classic thriller plots: the lovers-on-the-run tale and the hostage drama, where the suspense revolves around waiting for the wormy prisoner to work up the guts to turn on his tormentors. In Restraint, Andrew does this by tapping into the vulnerable psyches of his trashy self-esteem-challenged captors.
Shot in grey tones bled dry of primary colours, the action is loaded with a lot of visual \'atmosphere\', borrowed it seems, from horror movies featuring big spooky houses. In the end it doesn’t help the mood, which is more glum than menacing. Director David Denneen uses the now somewhat dated observational 'nervy’ camera style, where it wobbles and whips over the action implying that anything can happen. Trouble is, the plot questions: Which handsome head-case will the sexy girl go with? and What did happen to the beautiful fiancé of the rich guy?, tend to telegraph the plot twists so far in advance that interest is reduced to the B-grade basics, as in How much more casual nudity can be squeezed out here? Still, the acting is committed, and the script has ideas as opposed to gimmicks.
Extra features include standard, and therefore fairly inhibited and unenlightening EPK interviews with cast and crew.
