TV REVIEWS : Romance, Missed Opportunities in ‘Heart’

Even with its soapy title, the CBS movie “Captive Heart: The James Mink Story” has the makings of a good story.

In 1850s Canada, James Mink (Louis Gossett Jr.), the son of a freed slave, is a wealthy business magnate who is married to an Irish immigrant (Kate Nelligan). Over the objections of the Minks’ daughter, Mary (Rachel Crawford), who aspires to college and a teaching career, she is married off by her father to a white American whose mask of charm and culture belies the evil of his secret vocation. He’s a slave trader.

Thus, instead of going on an expected honeymoon to England, the stunned Mary becomes the abused property of a Virginia plantation owner, who is ever more delighted by his fetching new slave’s body than by her kitchen skills as a potato peeler. Discovery of their daughter’s fate sets up a scenario that sends the Minks on a perilous rescue mission to Virginia, with James pretending to be his wife’s shuffling slave.

Drawn from the “historical record” of the real James Mink, this has the potential to become a sort of interracial “Black Like Me,” with the proud, affluent, powerful James forced to experience the oppression and degradation imposed on his black brethren in the South.

Yet unfortunately, that interesting aspect of the story is de-emphasized in favor of a telegraphed romance between Mary and a young slave (Michael Jai White) en route to one of those pat, predictable finales that leaves nothing unknotted and gives TV movies a bad name.

“Captive Heart” does manage some darts of suspense along the underground railway, but for the most part chains its good cast (which also includes Rubby Dee as house mammy) to a story that squanders opportunities and instead settles for the routine.

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“Captive Heart: The James Mink Story” airs Sunday at 9 p.m. on CBS.