RAPT  yanks you along on the kidnapping of a haughty French industrial tycoon, and does a keen job conveying the fear and isolation he experiences. Getting a finger sliced off is always an unsettling negotiation. Meantime his distraught wife and daughters and ice-veined mother (paging Barbara Bush) deal with humiliating fallout at home. That comes about as the rapacious press and determined police relay the captive’s true financial state and how it got that way: philandering and gambling to the point where the hurt family, plus the nervous management and panicked shareholders in the company he runs begin to question the real relative ‘worth’ of the missing jerk, even as they try to outguess the dead-serious kidnappers. Public opinion factors in, thanks to the victim’s close ties to the government, trying to foist austerity policies on a populace fed up with excesses from the rich.

Tense throughout, the 2009 film runs 125 minutes: could have stood some trimming. Uninspired music score from Riccardo Del Fra detracts to a degree. The conclusion has viewers divided, some appreciating its open-ended irony, others feeling somewhat cheated by the abrupt stop. We leaned to the latter take on first view, but the film stays with you. This is mostly due to the precise direction by Lucas Belvaux (who also wrote the incisive screenplay) rather than any emotional involvement, as almost everyone in it is unsympathetic. This main guy (superbly done by the gaunt, near-emaciated Yvan Attal) is a real piece of work, based on true-life swiped rat Edouard-Jean Empain, a Belgian aristocrat.

Gee, thanks, Mom

With Anne Consigny (le wife), Andre Marcon, Francoise Fabian (‘Mama’), Alex Descas, Michel Voita, Gerard Meylan.