Ransom

Tom Mullen is a wealthy airline owner in Manhattan whose comfortable life with his wife Kate and their young son Sean falls apart when the boy is abducted. Tom initially works with the FBI, whose agents set up inside the family home under Lonnie Hawkins, while his wife pushes him to cooperate. When the handover goes wrong, Tom decides on a different approach: instead of paying the two million dollars demanded, he turns the money into a bounty on the kidnappers and goes public with it, against the wishes of the authorities and his wife.

Ron Howard directed the film, the eleventh in his directing career by the facts' count, following Apollo 13 and preceding EDtv. Richard Price and Alexander Ignon wrote the screenplay, and Brian Grazer, Scott Rudin and Kip Hagopian produced it for Touchstone Pictures and Imagine Entertainment. Mel Gibson plays Tom, with Rene Russo as Kate, Gary Sinise as Detective Jimmy Shaker, Delroy Lindo as Agent Lonnie Hawkins, Lili Taylor as Maris and Brawley Nolte as Sean. The production cost about 80 million dollars and took in roughly 309 million worldwide. On IMDb it holds 6.7 from 144,000 votes and on TMDB 6.7 from 2,200 votes, while a critics' rating of 6.6 from 73 reviews places it close to the audience scores.