Reclaim (2014)

Reclaim stars Ryan Philippe, John Cusack and Rachel Lafevre in a tale of child exploitation and trafficking. A wealthy couple who recently settled a court case and survived a car accident attempt to adopt an orphaned Haitian girl in the aftermath of a terrible storm that devastated the island nation. The child, on what should have been a happy beginning of her new life and family, disappears, causing the couple to panic and seek help from the police and anyone else with being reunited. Suspicious strangers appear and start to cause further trouble as the couple learn the terrible truth about adoption scams and how pervasive and profitable they are. What follows next is a convoluted and improbable plot, car chases, villainous speeches and what could have been a tense crime mystery degenerating into an odd mash-up of action adventure cliques set in the Caribbean. The little girl is cute but poorly used as the object of the chases, and John Cusack's role as a kidnapper becomes too overdone. It's just an OK film that, in the last act, dives off a cliff into absurdity.

Erik M.