That’s in part why the comparisons to I Know What You Did and Hunger Games are hollow. The main problem is one that plagues too many films: no depth. While there are plot elements that evoke both films (one of the kidnapped kids turns out to be good with a bow and arrow people are being hunted all of the kids have screwed up in that reckless, teen way-one of them involving a car accident), sadly, it’s not nearly as good as either. It’s a film in which everyone just seems to be going through the motions, as if no one really cared about it very much.Īt least one reviewer has called the film a cross between The Hunger Games and I Know What You did Last Summer. Well, maybe I felt a tiny bit angry because such an incredibly beautiful shooting location was being thrown away.

It wasn’t that Billionaire Ransom was bad in any truly objectionable ways. The rich kids then get to practice their newly-honed survival skills with their very lives on the line. As they are being taught the basics of survival on an isolated island, they are kidnapped by a group of criminals interested in a little wealth redistribution. It features a cast of young people (led by Jeremy Sumpter and Phoebe Tonkin), all of whom are rich and spoiled and sent to some kind of punitive boot camp for moral rehabilitation. I was punished, it seems, for my less-than-serious motivation in that the film’s location ended up being by far the best thing about it.īillionaire Ransom is directed by Jim Gillespie, known for I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), and written by Alexander Ignon. My primary motivation for watching the recently-released Billionaire Ransom ( Take Down outside the US) was its filming location.

Billionaire ransom movie