Dir. Ben Affleck · 2026 · 106 min · on Netflix
Mark Kimball (Ben Affleck) is a Los Angeles lawyer running for mayor. His son is kidnapped, and he and his wife Abigail (Kerry Washington) have a few hours to raise the ransom. Most of their money is tied up in the campaign, so they have to deal with it themselves and let things out that they would rather keep hidden. Affleck also directs and shares the script credit with Billy Ray and Connor O. McIntyre; Gillian Anderson, Steven Yeun, Luis Gerardo Méndez and Adriana Paz are in the cast, and Robert Elswit is the cinematographer.
Critics are quick to name the model: Kurosawa's High and Low, the kidnapping story in which a rich man's money and reputation are put on the line. Several point out that the film leans on that story without saying much about it. Others add Spike Lee's Highest 2 Lowest to the family tree.
Affleck never finds much of a pulse in his lackluster Kurosawa riff for Netflix.
Jake Coyle, AP
The pace. SlashFilm grants that it is never offensively bad and moves quickly, and Awards Radar, the warmest of the reviews, calls it tightly paced and a good, if not great, streaming option.
Gillian Anderson, as a crisis fixer, is the name that comes up again and again: AP says her brief role gives the film its best moments, SlashFilm calls her the standout, and Awards Radar wishes she had more screen time. Luis Gerardo Méndez gets praise from TheWrap as the only performer who stands out. Forbes singles out a long take from Elswit as the film's high point.
Almost everything else, according to the majority. RogerEbert.com gives it one star and calls it Affleck's weakest work as a director. AP gives it two stars out of four. The complaints repeat: the plot is a retread, the characters are thin, the politics and immigration themes are raised and then dropped, and the tension never builds because we know too much. TheWrap says the secrets are plain and the twist is telegraphed.
Some critics also link the flatness of the visuals to Affleck's admitted use of AI in parts of post-production, which casts a shadow over the film for them. Others, like Awards Radar, find the ending wild enough to land. The critics split mostly on how forgiving to be, not on what they saw.
The score here is a reading of that spread, built from published reviews rather than a viewing: two out of five. Competent mechanics, a famous cast and a story that has been told better.
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Netflix lists it as streaming from 9 October 2026, with a limited cinema release in select theaters. Availability varies by country, so check your own Netflix catalogue and local cinemas.