unclear about ending? SPOILER ALERT!!!!

Yes, he hired the heavyset guy (seen in flashback toward the end) that was shot by the kidnapper. His motive was to make enough money to finance his wife's transplant.

The movie doesn't exactly answer everything. It doesn't wrap things up in a neat with a neat little bow. And I'm alright with that because I think the visual information we get in those crucial final few minutes is more about imparting the idea that none of the adults involved here at any level are innocent.

Everyone's got their intentions here, including the guy we think is our hero.

It appears that Marlon intended for the rich family's kid to be kidnapped, but how that was supposed to happen we don't know because it happens after he finds the girls have skipped school. Was it supposed to occur after he picks them up from school? But he was already being followed since the police dude (or the person impersonating a cop?) was all over him already.

Marlon's intentions in that aspect of the plot are still a little unclear to me.

It's obvious that Marlon was part of the kidnapping conspiracy, to some extent, from the start, but I don't think that he was aware of how the kidnapping was going to happen and when it did, it seems to have taken him by surprise. When the "cop" (kidnapper) is pulling him over on the road, it seems to me that Marlon actually thought that a legit cop was stopping him to give him a legit ticket. Also, Marlon seemed genuinely shocked when the "cop" pulls his gun on him. Also, there's no way that Marlon would've let his own daughter get into the car and stay in the car all the way to the kidnapping site if he already knew that the kidnapping was going to happen when it did.

The film shows the same stocky guy with the moustache at the very beginning of the film, when he and Marlon are talking in the café about Marlon's politician employer getting his "karma" because he goes after teenage prostitutes, and then at the end when he and the long haired guy Visel are talking with Marlon openly about Marlon getting money out of the ransom for his sick wife. In between, we are only shown Visel talking to Marlon, and treating Marlon not at all as a co-conspirator but as a parent-victim of the kidnapping himself. That suggests to me that Marlon, who is portrayed throughout the film as a basically "good guy", but very uneducated, and not extremely bright, might have superficially talked with the stocky guy about a POSSIBLE kidnapping plan, and then the stocky guy then picked up the ball and ran it with his other buddy Visel, planning the kidnapping the way that it happened, and leaving Marlon in the dark. Also, although it seems that Marlon already knew the stocky guy when they spoke in the café, long haired Visel was a stranger to him in the conversation during the negotiations.

So it seems to me that although Marlon may have talked with the stocky guy about kidnapping the politician's daughter, he had no idea how or when it would happen, or that it would even happen at all until it actually did.

Also, don't forget that the two daughters were close friends, and that even Marlon's wife worked for the rich family before she got sick. And Marlon tells the detective that he worked for the rich politician for eight years. And the politician and his wife are shown to treat Marlon rather decently. Put that all together, and it makes me doubt whether Marlon would've kidnapped the daughter of a family that he was relatively close to, when it came right down to it.