In the dark of night, a child is taken from her bedroom right in front of her younger sister. She lived to describe her ordeal and the years it took to brng her kidnapper to justice.
Near misses, moments when she might have been discovered and freed, are detailed and chillingly remembered.
Law enforcement goes “by the book” and gets nowhere except to have an innocent man die in custody after weeks of interrogations. The fact that he “had a record” seems to be their only concern.
And a family takes matters into its own hands to get the word out and get around doubting, occasionally competent but stubbornly dogmatic lawmen who did less to free Elizabeth Smart than they’d like you to remember.
The British director of “Atomic People” and the Brit series “24 Hours in Police Custody” takes us inside a closeknit Salt Lake City Mormon family and into an investigation that transfixed the U.S. in 2002-2003 for “Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart.”
The documentary focuses on the Smart clan’s frustrations, the days the police spend focusing on members of the extended family as suspects — which is at least statistically defensible as such cases are often perpetrated by relatives — and the arrogance of detectives who fixate on a suspect the eyewitness daughter told them wasn’t the perpetrator.
Director Benedict Sanderson skillfully re-creates suspense where there shouldn’t be, as we know Elizabeth Smart survived and are reminded of that by present day her appearance on camera, early on. What we didn’t know or certainly don’t remember are all the times Smart came close to being discovered, rescued and freed — from the early searches to public and even police encounters with her and her kidnappers months afterward.
Smart grimly describes her religious crank persecutor as looking like Rasputin, with “this terrible smile” he broke into when he told the 14 year-old he wasn’t going “to rape and kill me…yet.”
The police come off understandably trapped by procedure, dogma and fixated on false leads. But there’s no getting around this reminder that the sharpest, most competent “Law & Order” detectives are figments of TV producer Dick Wolf’s cop-worshipping mind.
Smart’s under-suspicion uncles Tom and Dave have character arcs, coming off as klutzes early on, but redeemed by the third act.
Sanderson apparently didn’t have access to the mother of the missing girl, or her aunts. Is that the patriarchy at work? And “religion” should certainly figure more prominently in the story as the Mormon Church shares American Catholocism’s record of abuse and coverup.
Elizabeth talks about her young teen naivete about the sexual nature of this awful crime at the time it happened, but not about her advocacy for abused children in the years since. About the most revealing thing the film touches on regarding the Mormon faith of the family is the not-exactly-shocking realization that Mormons curse like everyone else.
“Kidnapped” is a solid piece of work, recreating a touchstone case in America’s furious fixation on abused children and kidnapped girls and women — the white and the blonde ones especially. For all the cans of worms it almost opens and doesn’t quite, it still tugs at the hearstrings as we remember the awful crime and the child who survived nearly a year of abuse, hunger and living under an abusive fanatic’s veil.
Rating: TV-MA, discussions of sexual violence, profanity
Cast: Elizabeth Smart, Mary Katherine Smart, Ed Smart, Dave Smart, Tom Smart, Cory Lyman and Cordon Parks.
Credits: Directed by Benedict Sanderson. A Netflix release.
Running time: 1:31
