Trapped

Two kidnappers have come up with the perfect parent trap: Nab the kid, isolate the mom and dad from each other, and use the resulting separation anxiety to collect the ransom. That’s the setup for this $30 million thriller, in which a suburban couple (Charlize Theron and Stuart Townsend) lose their young asthmatic daughter (Dakota Fanning) to a deviously high-tech duo (Kevin Bacon and Courtney Love).

But the abductors’ divide-and-conquer strategy — Theron and Townsend are paired off with their opposite-sex opponents — meant that the cast members were often in the dark about what was happening to their costars. ”It was basically shot as two different movies,” says Theron, who spends most of her screen time with Bacon. ”Kevin and I shot our little movie, and Courtney and Stuart shot their little movie. We never saw their dailies, and they never saw ours.”

Adapted from screenwriter Greg Iles’ own 2000 best-seller, ”24 Hours,” and shot in Vancouver, ”Trapped” found the actors bonding off screen as well, with Bacon and Theron knocking back shots of tequila after a long day’s work. It was a reprieve that was especially needed after filming what has become the trailer’s most squirm-inducing moment, when a table-turning Theron holds a scalpel dangerously close to the, uh, Bacon bits. ”It’s one of those scenes where the guys are all going to be crossing their legs, and the girls are going to be cheering Charlize on,” says Bacon. Ouch.

THE LOWDOWN With the recent wave of real-life abductions, ”Trapped”’s subject matter is a studio marketer’s nightmare.