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A nail biting ride through hell.

Most viewers turn away from choosing a DVD they have heard little about.  The action crime/thriller Tortured can change all that.
 
Undercover FBI agent, Kevin Cole (Cole Hauser), is under direct orders from powerful crime boss Ziggy to track down millions in stolen cash. As he begins to turn the screws on the shady mob accountant, Archie Green (Laurence Fishburne), who may just have all the answers, Agent Cole realizes that his upper hand tactics at torturing may be slowly slipping through his fingers. The mind games have begun, and in a world where ruthlessness is essential to survival, the most recent lie could well be the last.

Tortured lives up to its name and genre. Filled with tension, suspense and incredible acting, it offers thrill seekers a satisfying ride through the underbelly over undercover work and the mob.

Tortured spans seven days as Kevin tortures Archie in The Vault, a padded, sound proof room located inside a house on a nondescript street in a suburban neighborhood.  While Archie is hanging from chains attached to the ceiling, the intense interrogation continues to find out why Archie stole millions from Ziggy.
The torture scenes are so well acted that they seem real.  That’s especially the case when agent Cole plucks all 10 fingernails out of Archie’s fingers.  Cole is constantly on alert, fearing that his cover as an FBI agent is going to be blown.  There are flashbacks to six years earlier when Cole himself went through a similar torture in order to become accepted in the underbelly of crime.

Each torture becomes more extreme as the movie progresses while the pressures of living two lives play heavily on Kevin’s psyche.  By day, Kevin is Jimmy Vaughn, a willing candidate to do anything to keep from blowing his cover.  At night, he goes home to his wife, Becky (Emmanuelle) and tries to put the demons of the day aside and tenderly love his wife who finally can’t take the pressure and leaves Kevin to fend for himself.

The pressures continue to grow as Archie reveals more and more about himself and his family and pleads for the torture to stop.  This only infuriates Jimmy further to continue the torture so that Archie will break and reveal what he’s done with the money, thus safely protecting Kevin’s cover as Jimmy Vaughn, who dotes on handing out the torture.  However, Kevin is torn between how he lives his life as an agent for the FBI and justifies his actions as Jimmy Vaughn, the torturer.

Compounding Cole’s own mind torture is his father, Jack Cole (James Cromwell), who is the director of the FBI, and how closely involved he is with Ziggy and the crime syndicate.  Agent Cole has constant verbal battles with his father every time they are in the same room at FBI headquarters or out in the field.  His father continues to push Kevin to get to Ziggy and end the reign of terror and crime that he, himself, was involved in 25 years ago.  He pushes for Kevin to put an end to the violence that Ziggy has performed over the years.

Tortured ends with a stream of violence that had me sitting on the edge of the sofa.  I couldn’t tear myself away from watching how Ziggy was finally exposed.  I was shocked to learn who Ziggy actually was and what happened in the last few frames of this fantastic exploration into the world of crime and violence.  This is a film I highly recommend for the twists and turns in the plot as tension builds to the very surprising ending.  You won’t be disappointed.

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