I Have Your Wife / Live-Action Films

Times where a loved one is taken hostage in Live-Action Films.

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• 13 Minutes: The Nazis immediately round up all of Elser's relatives and Elsa, his former fiancée, once he's been arrested. It's the threat to her which gains his confession.
• Ant-Man: Darren Cross holds Scott's daughter, Cassie, hostage in her bedroom to draw out her dad.
• Act of Valor: Miller shows Christo a recording of the latter's daughter during his interrogation, with this implied. Then immediately subverted; he is not threatening Christo's daughter, he's just showing him his daughter to remind him of what he will lose if he doesn't cooperate and gets sent to prison for the rest of his life. When Christo asks if Miller will leave his family alone, he emphatically replies that he would never harm Christo's family. It's a brilliant piece of subtext without a direct threat, because you know Christo was wondering how in the hell this guy got footage of his daughter.
• Gary Oldman ups this trope's usual ante in Air Force One: "When you talk to the President, you might remind him that I am holding his wife, his daughter, his chief of staff, his national security advisor, his classified papers - and his baseball glove!" And it's that last part that really pisses everyone off. Only Tim Curry could have delivered that line any better.
• Bayard the bloodhound in Alice in Wonderland (2010) reluctantly serves the Red Queen because she's holding his wife and their pups in her dungeon.
• Anne kidnaps Pierre's wife Molly, and leaves a note pinned to the wall with a knife to emphasize the point in Anne of the Indies.
• The event of Artemis Fowl are kicked off by Opal Koboi calling the young Artemis Fowl and telling him that she has his father and if he wants him back, he has to secure the Aculos for her. At the end of the film, when Artemis doesn't bring her the Aculos, she tries to finish off Artemis Fowl Sr. with magic, but Holly Short uses the Aculos's power to bring him back to Fowl Manor before the deed can be completed.
• Done twice in Assassination Games, once with the girl in Brazil's apartment — he tells them that he doesn't care — and once with Flint's comatose wife.
• Played with in Austin Powers. When Austin is about to capture Dr. Evil, Alotta appears holding Vanessa at gunpoint, telling Austin to let him go. At this point Scott walks in, so Austin grabs and holds him at gunpoint in exchange for Vanessa. Dr. Evil is completely indifferent.
• In Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice Lex Luthor, has Lois Lane kidnapped to get Superman's attention and once Superman shows up and confronts him, Luthor reveals he knows who Superman is and has also kidnapped Martha Kent, intending to force Superman to kill Batman as part of his plan to discredit Superman. Once Batman learns what's going on, he goes and rescues Martha. Luthor's reaction is to release Doomsday.
• Best Seller. The Corrupt Corporate Executive has the protagonist's daughter brought to him by two policemen as a demonstration of his power. He says she is free to leave with her father, as he's now demonstrated that his men can reach her at any time.
• In The Big Lebowski the (non-Dude) Jeffrey Lebowski's wife, Bunny, is "kidnapped" and held for one million dollars ransom.
• Probably the first film example is The Black Hand (1906), where three mobsters kidnap the daughter of a butcher in order to press him for $1,000.
• In Blast the Big Bad has set up bombs in Atlanta and goes as far as tying hero Jack Bryant's wife to the bombs, so he will die knowing he failed to save her.
• In Blue Velvet, local crime boss Frank Booth kidnaps Dorothy's husband and son in order to force her to be his sex slave, and even cuts off said husband's ear just to intimidate her further. She is periodically allowed to talk to them on the phone, and is usually frantically desperate to do so.
• In Bon Cop, Bad Cop, the villains kidnap the French cop's daughter in similar fashion.
• The Monster in Bride of Frankenstein, on Dr. Pretorius' orders, kidnaps Elizabeth so that her husband will co-operate in making a bride for him.
• In Capricorn One, the astronauts are told the safety of their families is contingent on their willingness to cooperate with the fake Mars landing.
• In Cash on Demand, Colonel Hepburn holds the family of bank manager Fordyce hostage as part of a cold-blooded plan to steal 97,000 pounds.
• In Chai Lai Angels: Dangerous Flowers, Dragon's gang abducts Rose's fiancé Gus in an attempt to force the Chai Lais to back off.
• In City Heat, Murphy's girlfriend Caroline is kidnapped by Pitt's gang to force Murphy to hand over the missing records.
• In Clockstoppers, the Big Bad kidnaps Zak's father to ransom back Zak's hypertime watch.
• Code of Silence: The Comachos kidnap Diana Luna to force Sergeant Cusack to deliver mafia guy Tony Luna (Diana's father) to them. When Luna is killed along with his uncle (thus making the deal impossible, as the Colombians wanted him alive), Cusack arranges a fake hostage exchange so he can take out the whole Comacho gang single-handedly.
• The Excuse Plot of Commando (1985) is that the baddies have kidnapped John Matrix's daughter to force him into doing their bidding. It becomes clear straight away that this isn't going to work.
  Diaz: [waving Jenny's "I Love You Daddy" Father's Day card in Matrix's face] If you want your kid back, then you gotta cooperate, right?
  Matrix: Wrong. [shoots Diaz]
• The Commuter: Joanna tries to coerce Michael into doing her bidding through getting his wife and son abducted, with the threat of them being killed if he doesn't obey. Despite the threat, he refuses to murder an innocent person, and they're rescued by the FBI.
• The Conspiracy: The Tarsus Club buys Aaron's silence by threatening his wife and child.
• Criminal (2016): Xavier forces Bill/Jericho to give him the Wormhole program by holding Jill and Emma hostage.
• In The Criminal, the gang initially kidnaps Suzanne because they think she knows where the money is hidden. When it turns out she doesn't, they instead hold her as a bargaining chip to force Johnny to lead them to the loot.
• In Deewaar, a corrupt businessman kidnaps union leader Anand's wife and his two sons, and forces him to sign a document with conditions highly unfavourable to the striking workers in exchange for their safe release.
• Die Hard:
  • Die Hard plays around with this. McClane's wife is among the hostages taken by Hans's crew, but Hans is completely unaware of this until late in the movie. And once he does find out and radios McClane to tell him about it, he can't reach him because he's already fighting The Dragon.
  • Live Free or Die Hard has the villains capturing McClane's daughter instead. Instead of even feigning that he'll cooperate, he just tells them he's going to kill them all and take her back. And when they try to emotionally manipulate him by putting her on the line with him? She tells her dad exactly how many bad guys are left.
• Don't Say a Word: The villain holds the main character (Michael Douglas)'s wife at gunshot in their home, forcing him to cooperate with him.
• The Family Plan: McCaffrey uses threats to Dan's family when he's coercing him into working as an assassin once again.
• The plot of Fargo revolves around a basic plot of I Have Your wife. Just as we planned.
• Spoofed in The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu when the hero's lawnmower is kidnapped by Fu Manchu's minions.
• Fletch Lives. Fletch confronts the Big Bad with evidence of his Evil Plan, saying that his Love Interest is ready to hand over everything he knows to the media if something happens to him.
  Villain: You're bluffing, Fletch.
  Fletch: No, I'm not.
  Villain: You think you're not... but you are. [The Dragon drags in Fletch's girlfriend at gunpoint]
• From Beyond the Grave: Evil occultist Sir Michael Sinclair, from "The Door", found the secret of immortality; constructing his own personal room behind an ornate door, Sinclair lures those who come into possession of the door to the room to murder them and take their souls in order to extend his life. Targeting young William Seaton and his wife Rosemary, Sinclair kidnaps Rosemary to lure in Seaton, plotting to harvest them both, as "two souls are better than one".
• Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019). Subverted. The eco-terrorists kidnap both Dr. Russell and her daughter, the latter to make Russell co-operate with their demands... except Dr. Russell actually went with the eco-terrorists of her own free will, and they're actually exasperated that she pulled her daughter into their plot for no good reason.
• Hercules (2014): Cotys threatened his grandson's life to ensure his daughter's cooperation while he has her enlist Hercules to his side. He earlier also did this to force into accepting his rule.
• Subverted and then played straight in Akira Kurosawa's High and Low: kidnappers tell a wealthy industrialist they have his son, except they grabbed the his servants' son by mistake. After a lot of conscience wrestling — close a major deal or save someone's child — he pays the ransom. The rest of the movie follows the cops trying to track down the kidnappers, and the kidnappers reasons for their crime.
• Hostage: Bad guy kidnaps Bruce Willis's family to force Bruce to get a DVD that incriminates him from a hostage situation going on elsewhere. After resolving the hostage situation and getting the DVD, he manages to kill the bad guy and save his family.
• Every post-Indiana Jones Harrison Ford movie features this plot, such as 2006's Firewall.
  • Pointed out humorously in the parody/mash-up Wife Force One.
  • Subverted in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in which Indy finds himself in a version of this situation and promptly gives in, only to discover that his girlfriend Elsa is The Mole.
• In My Country: Dumi desperately pleads that he only informed against activists as otherwise the police would have murdered his family instead. It doesn't save him from their vengeful comrades.
• In the Name of the Father: What finally breaks Gerry and makes him sign the confession is one detective claiming he'll shoot his father, acting like he's crazy enough to really do this.
• Jack Reacher proves himself to be clever when the female attorney he's working with is kidnapped. "You'll bounce me around to make sure I'm not followed, then walk me into an ambush and kill me." He then goes on to be the first action hero in history to not only defy but invert it — he's got all the evidence he needs, so unless they give up their location so he can come try and kill them when he is damn good and ready, he'll just cut his losses and hand everything to the FBI.
• Happens more than once in Jupiter Ascending. Stinger's daughter is ailing, compelling him into handing Jupiter and Caine over to Titus in exchange for the money to afford a 'recode'. Balem does this with Jupiter's entire family, in order to convince her to abdicate so he can take Earth for his own.
• In The Karate Kid Part II, the villain Chozen forces Daniel to fight him by threatening to kill Kumiko, the Japanese girl Daniel loves. He doesn't actually kidnap her, but he does capture her in the middle of a festival and hold a knife to her throat in front of the entire village, so it counts.
• A rare protagonist example in Kate when the title character kidnaps Ani, a teenage girl, to draw out Ani's Yakuza relatives. Circumstances force them to team up when it turns out the Big Bad would rather Ani not survive her kidnapping.
• The Firewall-esque Lifetime Movie of the Week The Kidnapping has Judd Nelson kidnap a bank employee's daughter (and her babysitter, whom they promptly kill when she tries to escape with the kid) to get her to give them access to a specific safe-deposit box.
• Killer Elite. A Retired Badass is forced to do One Last Job when his mentor tries fleeing with the money rather than taking on the dangerous assignment. After completing the job, he's retired to his home when he gets an unexpected phone call from his employer saying he still has to kill one more person, and implying that he has the hitman's girlfriend. He rushes to her room only to find she's sleeping peacefully. Then he finds a cartridge case tucked into her hair.
• The film version of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen has a variation that might be called I Have Your You. The Big Bad steals Dorian Gray's portrait — yes, that one — and uses it as leverage for his cooperation. Interestingly for a villain, he actually honors their agreement once his victim holds up his end of it.
  • In a more straightforward example from the same film, the Big Bad forces the cooperation of the scientists he kidnapped by holding their wives and children in prison cells.
• In Left Behind (2014), one of the passengers on board the plane from New York to London in the movie suspects that her daughter was kidnapped while she wasn't looking and is being held for ransom, so she pulls out a gun and threatens to shoot unless the passengers admit who is responsible. Buck Williams tries to calmly talk her down from killing anybody, while another passenger says that it was most likely the Rapture that took the woman's daughter. She then turns the gun on herself, but Buck also keeps her from killing herself and relinquishes the gun from the woman.
• In Lone Hero, King kidnaps John's girlfriend Sharon and offers to exchange her for his jailed boss Bart.
• A Man Called Sledge: Sledge leaves with his winnings despite the gang's protestations, and the old man proposes they kidnap Sledge's girlfriend Ria. With her, they follow Sledge to a Spanish Mission town, deserted for a local festival. Now leading the gang, the old man attempts negotiating with Sledge, while one of the others tries to ambush him. Sledge is wounded while killing the bushwhacker, Kehoe, but still refuses to bargain, so the old man reveals their kidnapping of Ria, who is then badly hurt by Bice throwing her from a high wall
• In The Man Who Could Cheat Death, Georges Bonnet imprisons Dr. Gerrard's beloved Janine and holds her hostage to compel Gerrard into operating on him.
• The Man Who Knew Too Much sees Dr. Ben McKenna receive warning about the impending assassination of a prime minister. The people in charge of the plot try to prevent Ben from telling the police by holding his son hostage.
• Invoked Trope in Mechanic Resurrection. When Jason Statham's character saves Jessica Alba from an abusive boyfriend, he quickly realises the Big Bad is trying to set up a Rescue Romance in preparation for this scenario. Despite this everything about the trope gets played straight.
• Mission: Impossible III: Davian abducts Ethan's wife Jules, and forces Ethan to watch as he tortures and kills her. It turns out the woman killed was actually Davian's head of security who failed on the job, and he has Jules elsewhere in order to keep Ethan in line.
• In Once Upon a Spy, Big Bad Marcus Valorium ensures Dr. Webster's cooperation in programming the X-2 computer by holding Webster's daughter hostage.
• In Promising Young Woman, Cassie abducts Dean Hudson's daughter and tells Dean Hudson that she has left her in the same dorm room where Nina was raped; adding that she is certain that the boys who currently reside there will undoubtedly realize that she is underage, and treat with all the respect that Al Munroe showed Nina. An increasingly desperate Dean Hudson demands to know the room number, only for Cassie to say that if she had investigated Nina's case as thoroughly as she claimed then she would remember the number. Cassie is lying, and has left the daughter waiting at a diner for a boy band who will never show up.
• The movie Ransom is a complete subversion of this trope. Instead of paying the ransom for his son, he offers the amount of 2 million bucks to anyone who can find and rescue his son instead, because he assumes either 1. his son is already dead, or 2. the kidnappers have no intention of returning his son anyway.
• A Reason to Live, a Reason to Die!: It is eventually revealed that the reason why Col. Pembroke surrendered Fort Holman without firing a shot was because Maj. Ward had his son and was threatening to hang him. After Pembroke surrendered, Ward kept his word and did not hang his son. He shot him.
• In Red (2010) the CIA captures Frank's love interest, Sara. When Cooper tries to use this to get Frank to turn himself in, the CIA runs a phone trace. As it turns out, Frank was in Cooper's house at the time while Cooper's wife and kids were outside; Cooper is shocked and promises that Sara would not be hurt.
• Red Eye: Jackson kidnaps Lisa's father and threatens to kill him unless Lisa cooperates with him to kill a politician.
  Jackson: Right now, our guy is parked outside your dad's house, listening to a little smooth jazz while he sharpens his 12-inch K-Bar. That's a knife.
• Revolver (1973): An Italian prison official's wife is kidnapped, and the kidnappers demand that a notorious prisoner be released in order for the man to get his wife back.
• In The Ribald Tales of Robin Hood, Prince John coerces Marian into cooperating with his scheme to trap Robin by holding her father hostage.
• Riot Girls: The Titans repeatedly use threats against people's abducted loved ones to get what they want.
• In Robin Hood: The Rebellion, the Sheriff of Nottingham kidnaps Lady Marian and Much in order to force Robin's hand.
• This backfires badly in Ronin (1998). Gregor reveals that he has a sniper who is currently aiming at the girlfriend of the Russian faction's leader to ensure his leaving with the money after their exchange. Unfortunately they're entirely willing to let her die just to kill Gregor and take back their money.
• The kidnappers in Ruthless People threaten to kill Sam Stone's wife. Turns out he was already plotting to kill her, and the kidnappers appear to have saved him the trouble.
• In the Made-for-TV Movie San Francisco International Airport (another proud MST3K alumnus), a group of thieves do this to an airline pilot to force him to keep his flight for the day grounded, as part of a Evil Plan to smuggle the proceeds of a bank robbery out of town. (Their leader also kidnaps a female airport employee for another stage of the plan.)
• Saw:
  • The first film plays this pretty straight with Zep keeping Lawrence's family hostage.
  • Saw II has an interesting subversion. Eric's son Daniel is taken hostage, but, in order to get him back, John instructs Eric not to steal/kill/etc. but... to talk to him. Eric fails miserably when the climax comes, which is explicitly shown in the ending's twist.
• In Séance on a Wet Afternoon, Phony Psychic Myra Savage hatches a scheme to boost her profile as a medium by having her husband Billy kidnap the daughter of a wealthy industrialist so she can offer her services to locate the missing child. However, she says they need to make it appear the "kidnappers" mean business, so she has Billy cut out words from a magazine to put together a ransom note demanding £25,000 (which she plans to return once she becomes famous as a medium) with instructions for how to co-ordinate the money handover.
• Subverted (possibly inverted) in the movie Se7en: Less "I have your wife" and more "You have your wife's head.". The idea is still to use this to get the hero to do what the villain wants.
• In Sherlock Holmes (1932), Moriarty kidnaps Alice and holds her hostage to compel Faulkner into giving him the details of the safety deposit boxes and not reporting the robbery from the bank until after he and his gang are well away.
• Shooter. The bad guys kidnap Sarah, which makes Bob realize how much he cares for her.
  Nick Memphis: I didn't know you had a woman.
  Bob Lee Swagger: Neither did I... until they took her.
• In Space Mutiny, the villainous Elijah Kalgan kidnaps the commander's "daughter-mother" (thanks to some bad makeup work on the lead female actor who was 34 at the time of the film's release).
  Crow: I have your mother!
• Space Jam: A New Legacy: Al G. Rhythm's plan is to kidnap thousands of civilians into the Serververse, and uses the climactic basketball game as an opportunity to bet on LeBron and the Looney Tunes. To make sure they don't make plans to sidestep or back out, he includes the rest of LeBron's family in the Hostage Situation, something the basketball star can futilely yell a Big "NO!" for.
• In the Sam Raimi Spider-Man Trilogy films, this happens to Peter Parker all the time— Mary Jane is held hostage in some manner by supervillains at least four times; as is Aunt May, twice; and so are quite a number of innocent civilians throughout the trilogy. In the second movie, it's done by a villain who doesn't even know that Peter is Spider-Man. Interestingly, in the comics Mary Jane actually very rarely gets kidnapped.
• In Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, Darth Vader captures and tortures the rebels with the intent of luring Luke to rescue them - and either turn him to the dark side or hand him over to The Emperor. The rebels try to warn Luke that it's a trap, Leia and Chewie get away because Lando has a conscience, Han's taken prisoner by a bounty hunter, and Luke needs rescuing himself after Vader schools him in a lightsaber duel.
• Suicide Squad (2016). When the Joker and his goons shoot their way into the laboratory that makes the Explosive Leash, there's a technician locked behind bulletproof glass. The Joker simply puts a computer notebook up against the window, showing a live image of the technician's wife being held with a knife at her throat, begging him to just do whatever they ask.
• Superman II. Ursa has the 3 Kryptonian supervillains take Superman's girlfriend Lois Lane along with them to the Fortress of Solitude with the intent of using her as a hostage against Superman.
• Switchback: The killer kidnapped LaCrosse's son, but doesn't coerce him into stopping the hunt. Rather, he left LaCrosse a note saying he can only save his son by killing him, as a challenge. Most everyone believes his son is already dead, though LaCrosse says he has to keep believing otherwise.
• In Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, Mr. Baek coerces Geum-ja into making a False Confession to the murder of Won-mo by holding her daughter hostage.
• In Tower of London (1962), Richard III holds Lady Margaret—the daughter of Lord Stanley and the girlfriend of Sir Justin—prisoner in his dungeons to ensure the cooperation of both Stanley and Justin.
• Under Siege 2: Dark Territory: When the terrorists discover that Casey Ryback is taking them out one by one, they figure out that his niece is traveling with him from the passenger manifest so they can use her as bait.
• Universal Soldier: The Return: SETH kidnaps Deveraux's daughter Hillary to force him to give up the code that will prevent his own program from shutting down. However, when SETH notices that she's sick, he decides to turn her into a Unisol to "fix" her.
• The Usual Suspects has a "flashback" of how Keyser Soze came to power. Low-level thugs take his wife and children hostage while he's out on business. He comes home to find them under guard and with guns pointed at them. He then shoots his wife, multiple thugs and his kids. He tells the only remaining thug still alive to tell his bosses what happened.
• In Valdez is Coming, Valdez abducts Tanner's woman and plans to send her back to him in exchange for the $100. After the lengthy chase, Gay Erin is hoping that Tanner will make the exchange: not because she wants to to return to Tanner, but because she is convinced Valdez is in the right.
• In Vigilante Diaries, Andreas decides decides that the best way to get the Vigilante to cease hostilities against the Armenian mob is to kidnap his lover Jade (who is pregnant) and hold her hostage.
• The Viral Factor does the I Have Your Mom and Daughter, subjected on two different characters. Sean Wong the Big Bad forces civilian virologist Rachel into developing a Synthetic Plague for him by capturing Rachel's mother, and then demands for Man Yeung to deliver a sample of the antidote to him after abducting Yeung's daughter.
• Welcome to the Punch (2013). A Professional Killer goes to visit his grandmother, only to find the Cowboy Cop and Villain Protagonist sitting on either side of her, posing as his old army mates who've come to visit. Unknown to grandma, a third man standing right behind her is pointing a pistol at her head. They make it clear the killer is to come out "for some drinks" while one of them waits with grandma to ensure his co-operation. The killer calls their bluff.
  "You think that keeping a hostage is going to force me into a corner? But none of you have been where I have, seen what I've seen. None of you have the selfless commitment. And not one of you possesses what it takes... to actually put a bullet through the back of that woman's head." (shootout ensues)
• In the 1982 thriller Who Dares Wins (aka The Final Option), the protagonist is an ex-SAS man sent to infiltrate a terrorist group as a Fake Defector. However the terrorists suspect he may be lying to them, so they send a team to hold his family hostage while they carry out their main plan.

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