Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

This gets 3 because it has some decent acting and characterisation, and part of the plot is intriguing. It loses 7 because of the absurd parts of the plot. SPOILER=>The FBI want to run a deep cover operation against a criminal mastermind, so who do they send in an attempt to covertly infiltrate this extremely security conscious, violent crime group: The son of the FBI Director!!!! Then at the same time as he is working deep undercover as a henchman, he also flies to Washington to meet with his dad, and attends FBI Black Tie functions at a local hotel.Whilst undercover he commits several unlawful acts, such as torturing a captive, which I'm pretty sure is a no-no if you want to go to court with any of this.Then the FBI Director/Dad gets directly involved in a high risk operation, with his undercover son, and decides to take a "rescued" informant directly (and illegally) to a private warehouse somehow giving the slip to the other 100 FBI agents, an act that would see him dismissed by the President in a heartbeat.There are other annoyances, like how does a guy who rides a motorbike with no visible storage, keep arriving home with long-stemmed roses, Chinese food and a large undamaged pizza? How does an FBI agent spend seven days in a chamber torturing a guy, but not notice the loose drain cover that a colleague later spots in the first 5 seconds in the room. Why does a guy who is still supposed to be undercover personally identify himself as an FBI agent in full view of the camera that has (supposedly) watched his every act in that room for the past week?

I liked the movie but the ending really really ruined it. It was like they discovered there wasn't much movie budget left and they needed to quickly wrap things up and close the story:********** Major spoiler **********Kevin convinces his FBI colleagues to start a rescue operationZiggy has FBI inside information and knows there is a rescue operation comingArchie Green, the person Kevin is torturing is killed off and his body is dumped in a bag under the torture roomZiggy takes plastic surgery to take Archie's place at the FBI rescue operationZiggy let his three henchmen get killed by the FBI, somehow this fits in master planZiggy can somehow predict the future and knows in this FBI operation he isn't going to get hurt first by Kevin before he gets rescuedZiggy can also predict Kevin's dad takes them three to another place where he can steal a gun from KevinZiggy then like all criminal masterminds do explains how he had this planned for years, even watched Kevin grow upZiggy wants to shoot Kevin in front of his dad's eyes, just to get back at Kevin's dad for killing his daughterKevin's dad jumps in front of the bullet that was meant for KevinZiggy then tells Kevin how the are alike and how Kevin should join his evil empireZiggy can predict and plan all these things but somehow he can't predict that he can't convince Kevin and that Kevin will want to kill himThe writers knew this was a ridiculous ending and try to save it by a mysterious ending: Kevin walks out of the FBI office and gets a phone call "I've got a letter from Ziggy, i'm supposed to answer to you, am I speaking to the right person?"The ending is so ridiculous that it really ruined what could have been a very good movie.Here a some major flaws:Ziggy is (almost) a billionaire: 25 years ago he already had lots of shops, restaurants, etc... all started with his drug money. If you can run a criminal drugs empire for 25 years you'll make tens of millions every year and you have hundreds of henchmen doing your dirty stuff like assassinations, drive by shootings, kidnappings, etc... Ziggy is so careful in the entire movie, has all these goons to protect him and then takes the risk of showing himself. What the hell is Ziggy doing?Ziggy knows everything about Kevin and his dad, with all those millions he could just hire armies of goons to kill them bothZiggy knew from the start Kevin was FBI, after the coffee shop in the beginning of the movie he could already have killed Kevin, chopped him in pieces and sent him in parts to his father. That would hurt his father more than to shoot Kevin in front of his father.Ziggy has plastic surgery to make himself look and talk like a black man? No offense to black people but do you really think a white drug empire kingpin worth a few hundreds millions dollars doing this?Shouldn't Ziggy just enjoy the good upper class life in his big villa with his beautiful wive, mistresses and children and have this tiny ant Kevin and his dad crushed by his goons?Why waste your valuable time with such a ridiculous plan to destroy your enemy? I could go on for hours about all the flaws in the ending, but this should be enough explanation.Good movie, worthless ending.

Good casting, good acting, intriguing characters, very good pacing all make this an entertaining movie to watch. There is competency and cold blooded efficiency on both sides which one would expect from a top notch operation, and none of the intrusive hyped up dialogue that infests many serious crime movies. None of the actors is weak, with Robert La Sardo particularly impressive in a secondary role. Emmanuelle Chriqui manages to exude sex appeal without a descent into tawdry, and the psychiatrist manages to come off as a solid character and asset to the film.All of this is gradually undermined as the move progresses and the plot unfolds. Although the twists and turns keep things interesting, the major direction becomes increasingly predictable and unfortunately increasingly implausible. It wasn't enough to ruin the movie but it certainly kept it from climbing out of a high midrange rating.

Tortured is a mystery/thriller. The way it's presented is first-rate, and I wondered, where did this one come from? After it's all over, you have a feeling of having been had. I was entertained for the 90 minutes, but some plot changes would have made this a believable story. There are some gruesome torture scenes. It stars Cole Hauser, Laurence Fishburne, James Cromwell, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Jon Cryer, and James Denton. Laurence Fishburne is wasted in the role. Jon Cryer seems miscast. James Cromwell is doing his LA Cofidential role, poorly. Emmanuelle Chriqui is extremely sexy. And James Denton seems like he's on loan from Desperate Housewives. The title, Tortured, lends itself to a joke, but I was mildly entertained by this one. It needed better acting and a better story. It's just too unbelievable.