It’s never a good look for a movie to be known under multiple different monikers, and history has shown that the majority of features to chop and change their nomenclature depending on when and where they get released more often than not prove to be either critical disasters or box office bombs, with 2007’s Butterfly on a Wheel definitely fitting the remit.
Even though it boasted an engaging central conceit and a talented trio of leads in Pierce Brosnan, Gerard Butler, and Maria Bello, director Mike Barker’s mystery thriller couldn’t find success no matter what it was called. The $20 million potboiler could only rustle up a shade over $7 million at the box office, even if it did prove surprisingly popular in China.
Whether you know it as Butterfly on a Wheel, Shattered, Desperate Hours, or even you’ve never even heard of it at all, one irrefutable fact is that the film is one of Netflix’s biggest hits heading into the weekend per FlixPatrol. Thankfully settled on a solitary title for a change, it’s going by the former on the market-leading streaming service, and has snaked its way onto the worldwide watch-list.
Butler and Bello play a married couple living a dream life, at least until Brosnan’s deranged sociopath kidnaps their daughter. He’s not even remotely interested in a ransom, though, and instead opts to have the pair dismantle their own lives from the inside out as some sort of twisted game. There’s even a stupendously stupid twist right at the end, which tends to be par for the course with these sort of labyrinthine flights of lunacy.