As the story unfolds and as Cole gets further into the crime family's business, he battles himself through horrible dreams and wondering which side of the proverbial fence he is on. The story is told by jumping back and forth between the present day (shown day by day) and six months earlier, which becomes quite distracting and somewhat hard to follow the first time through. Some of the story is also revealed as Cole talks to a therapist (Kevin Pollak, Grumpy Old Men; Casino), but the disjointed presentation seems a bit more contrived than totally needed.
As his alias Jimmy Vaughn continues the torture treatment, Cole becomes more and more unsettled and knows that as time goes on, he will eventually be told by Ziggy to kill the accountant. In the meantime, Cole also converses with the FBI, and his Director father (James Cromwell, The Green Mile; I, Robot), in an effort to finally bring down the mob king; as time goes on, he finds out vital information about just how deep this operation has gone. Without spoiling the plot, let's just say that there are many twists revealed in Tortured.
It must be said that my initial impressions of Tortured were not that pleasing. The film falls somewhere in a purgatory zone between an A and B movie in terms of overall production, direction, and camera/editing work. The beginning of the film goes a bit overboard with the camera and editing, which is what put the initial bad taste in my mouth. However, with that said, the actual movie sets, acting, and (to an extent) the overall story were not bad by any means... it was more in the delivery that took time to get used to. In the end, I did finally get more involved in the film, and the bad taste turned into that of bittersweet instead. If you can get past some of the presentation issues, and you enjoy plots with a twist, Tortured is worth a rent.
