TV REVIEW : ‘Desperate Rescue’: When Cultures Collide

A desperate mother hires commandos to carry out a risky paramilitary operation to pluck her daughter from foreign soil in “Desperate Rescue: The Cathy Mahone Story” (at 9 tonight on NBC, Channels 4, 36 and 39).

Arabs and Muslims won’t like this story because it dramatizes from an American point of view the severe differences between the two cultures and what happens, in this case, when an American woman marries a Jordanian who suddenly turns domineering and cold and insists on taking their daughter to a mosque.

What sounds like a screenwriter’s overheated pitch for a suspense thriller is actually the true story of a Texas mom’s nightmare. In 1987, Cathy Mahone wakes up one morning to discover that her former husband has abducted their daughter to his native Jordan, where he is legally recognized as the girl’s only parent. U.S. authorities will not or cannot do anything to get the child back.

Convincingly played by Mariel Hemingway, the anguished mother, rebuffed by official American channels, decides to skirt legalities and employs three ex-Delta Force commandos with a track record for locating and rescuing kidnaped American children who have been spirited overseas (a story documented in the nonfiction book “Rescue My Child” by Neil C. Livingstone).

Director Richard Colla and adapter Guerdon Trueblood squeeze the requisite tension out of a band of heroic pirates endangering their lives to reunite mother and daughter. Real-life commandos Dave Chatelier, Don Feeney and J.D. Roberts are grittily performed by Clancy Brown, James Russo and Jeff Kober.

(As a postscript to the story seen here, the mother and girl changed their identities and managed to start new lives, but they still fear the ex-husband will come after them.)