My Daughter is Missing (2017 Lifetime)
Cast: Miranda Raison, Emmett J Scanlan, Sophie Robertson
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Synopsis (via Lifetime)
Sara, a former hacker, and now an Internet security specialist, have come to Belgrade to attend a cybercrime conference. While she is there, her daughter and a Serbian human trafficking ring kidnap a college friend. Will Sara be able to save them before it’s too late?
Thoughts
The movie starts with a dance club playing terrible music. A man with a neck tattoo roofies a girl’s cosmo and throws her into a van.
Sara visits her daughter, who is studying abroad. Karissa and Laura are roommates and happy to have Karissa’s mom in town to take them out to Belgravian cafes. Sara is also speaking at a conference about cybersecurity. Sara used to be a hacker, and it got her husband into it. He started hacking into banks, and she ended things.
After her conference, where no one listens to her presentation, Sara goes on a date with a bearded man named Stefan. (Who is a detective looking to up his security for the police department.)
Meanwhile, Karissa and Laura dance the night away at the lame night club. The neck tattoo guy drugs their cosmos and attempts to kidnap them. Karissa notices she someone has drugged her and calls her mother, but then she is taken. The neck tattoo smashes the phones and throws out their purses before throwing them in the back of a van.
On her date, Sara gets the call and rushes to save her daughter. The club owner and bouncer are uncooperative and will not let her review the security footage. (
Which, of course, catches the kidnapping.) Then she calls the police, but they laugh it off as a girl going out on the town. With no one to help her, Sara puts on her sexy hacking clothes and breaks into the club, hacking into the security system. Sara identifies the neck tattoo guy and the license plate. She copies the info to a flash drive, and that downloading cliche happens where she watches the files transferring as the police enter, thinking her is a thief.
The police arrest Sara and she remembers that she knows someone in the Belgravian police department. She explains to him what is happening, and he is surprisingly unsympathetic. Stefan assigns Alek to keep tabs on Sara.
Sara uses Laura’s phone to contact the neck tattoo guy and sets up a meeting. She is fearless and threatens him that she will release the footage. He bolts, and Sara chases him. Alek grabs him and holds him down while Sara screams in her face. I love this mother’s RAGE! Before he can talk, the neck tattoo guy is hit by a car and killed. Sara holds his lifeless body and practically screams, “NOOOOOOOOOO!” (It is perfectly campy.)
The kidnapped girls are held and then prepped to be sold into human trafficking. Karissa is convinced that her mother will save them and reminds Laura to remain calm. Laura attempts to run away and is shot in broad daylight. She survives and ends up in the hospital.
Sara and Alek question Laura and learn that Karissa is most likely on a boat heading to be auctioned off. They find the staging house for kidnapped girls and get more info from the IP address. Alek warns Sara about keeping a low profile from the police because he suspects they are involved. Sara hacks into the online auction and tracks the IP address with help from nerds from the conference.
They track down the boat, and Alek distracts them by pretending to be drunk. Then he punches the men in a drop-dead fight. Sara sneaks on the ship and almost saves her daughter, but Stefan stops her with a gun. He runs the whole operation.
While trying to get away with Karissa, Stefan’s boat malfunctions, allowing Sara time to wrestles with Stefan. Karissa knocks him out, and Alex pulls his gun on his boss and takes him into custody.
Sara and Karissa head back to the US and decide to take Laura with them. They can be one big happy family!
Side Note
Minority Report: None
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Overall rating
🔪🔪🔪 (3 Knives)
🍷🍷🍷 (3 glasses of wine required.)
*Photo Credit: © 2017 Lifetime
