En manos de un extraño

I saw this recently on Lifetime cable. I looked at it to start simply because Robert Urich was in it, and had just passed away. I figured I wouldn't stay with it for more than a few minutes but ended up seeing the whole thing. I was surprised at how much tension and suspense this Tv movie had packed into it, even with the distraction of commercial interuptions! It also features an ending that is somewhat open to interpretation which is a nice change from the usual TV movie storybook ending. There were some logic holes ie like why didn't a character call the police ( but that would have watered down the climax) however this is a good film.

Contrived unbelievable nonsense about a busy chap caught up in the search for a missing child.

Busy man agrees to go on holiday with his girlfriend, but cancels because of work and he doesn't have a clue why she's angry with him.

He becomes obsessed by a doll and this provides a lot of cringe moments.

Robert Ulrich was a competent actor but he's awful in this nonsense.

Even Lifetime would have trouble greenlighting this baffling, illogical tripe!

There is a clandestine circle in kidnapping children. One girl disappears and her mother puts up "Missing" posters. A businessman on his way home from work notices the girl in the poster looks exactly like a child that he saw in a train. His search goes through many places to help the mother find her daughter. A very stylish and interesting movie.

Classic. If you're into bad early 90's 'made for TV' movies. This one involves a child that vanishes. I had trouble paying attention (I have ADD) and combining attention defecit disorder with a bad early 90's TV movie makes for a rough situation.

It's awful. No two if ands it's or buts about it. But, if you laugh at horrible lines and a plot that any mildy intelligent person can pick apart within the first ten minutes, then this is for you. I have trouble giving a vote on this, because although being awful as it so obviously was, I was sickly drawn into watching it unfold. Like a book I've read 20 times, I knew every 'twist' and 'turn' involved. There weren't many to begin with, but a slow plot can sometimes be refreshing.

In a film made for television, Robert Urich portrays Jack Bauer, a comfortable corporate executive in the field of computer software manufacturing who unwillingly finds himself amidst an attempt to locate a missing girl whose photograph upon a poster he viewed in a subway, along with the child herself and her apparent kidnapper, after Jack is excluded from access to his automobile that is locked inside of a parking garage following a late work meeting, requiring him to use a public mode of transport. When he returns a doll dropped by the little girl, Carla, to her distressed mother Laura (Megan Gallagher), the latter pleads for his assistance with such fervour that, alien as such altruistic activity is to him, he reluctantly joins with her in a persistent attempt to find Carla, whereupon the pair discover that a rash of similar kidnappings is occurring throughout their city and soon Jack and Laura are privy to knowledge of a conspiracy involving selling of children. Despite reliance in the screenplay upon melodrama, continuity issues are few and a great deal of the dialogue is quite realistic and made even more so by skillful performances from cast members, notably the talented Gallagher, as well as from Urich, Isabella Hofmann, and Christine Dunford who contributes a topflight turn as a lady of the evening coerced into a child vending operation. Production values are pleasingly strong for the piece that is ably directed by David Greene to create an atmosphere of suspense with a dash of humour and a delightfully ambiguous ending, and the work also profits from an appropriate score from Peter Manning Robinson, burnished cinematography of Stevan Larner, and adroit set design by Steve Legner, all to the end of creating a film wherein attention to details generally counters well any clichés.