La sombra del crimen

Lazy effort to go with predictable and bad dialog. Morgan Freeman is simply too old to play the same character he has been playing for 40 years at this point in his career. The overall premise looks promising but it tries really hard to be serious while everyone is phoning it in. Jaimee Alexander is at least beautiful to look at but there is not enough of her in this to make it worth watching. I wanted to like this but it just goes from bad to worse to why would they waste time and money on this? I could literally see toupee glue in one of the early scenes where Cole Hauser is driving. I recommend avoiding this movie.

I watched it on a plane where I didn't have access to IMDB, otherwise I'd probably wouldn't. But I liked the trailer. This a classic B class cinema with beginner actors learning the ropes on how to deliver their lines (apart for Freeman). I refuse to believe majority of staff had any acting experience. The dialogs are cliche and spoken without conviction. It reminded me the "straight to "VHS" 1990 movies at times. But I feel the actors were let down by both the writer and director who allowed for the likes of "you don't mess with old Berta" being said over and over. It's hilariously bad at times.

However - criticism aside, I liked the fast pace and the guesswork what's gonna happen next. It was a bit of "Knives Out" style with unveiling mystery. If you're looking for an easy to follow thriller with hot actress and twists, go for it. It now makes me want to shoot a movie myself, clearly you don't need any acting or directing abilities whatsoever if you have the funding from the studio.

I read the bad reviews only after I started watching the movie but decided to continue with it. It was not all that bad - the development of the story and acting was ok for me to continue on with some forwarding. Then halfway through the series of murders became an unbelievable roller coaster of events. It was a surprising turn of events but felt artificially induced to keep the story interesting. The ending was really hurried and a turn off and not well thought through. Kind of one of those lazy endings to quickly wrap things up. All in all not too bad a movie to watch with some interesting characters just to kill time.

You can tell this was a newb filmmaker entry, and there's nothing wrong with that, because they have to start somewhere. However, rookie mistakes aside, it showed promise, but in the third act the writing became lazy and sloppy. It started off plausible, and as the twists started, it became a little more exciting, but then it was one plot hole after another, and then the laughable shake your head moments took away from the decent set-up. The casting and performances were good enough - especially considering the novice cast directing, and you know most of this film's low budget went to Morgan Freeman. The cinematography was decent as was the score. Had the writing been more cohesive and smarter after the mid-way mark, I would've easily given this a 7/10.

Cole Hauser and Morgan Freeman are both talented actors who should have run from this movie. Their performances are fine, but good lord. The writing starts off okay (at best) but becomes an absolute farce by the end. It's as though a capable writer began a screenplay and then died halfway through, only to have a drunk junior high student finish it.

If you make the mistake of watching this, you will be grateful when a murder happens. It terminates a performance that might have been decent (per the writing), but was very much not decent in reality.

I've rarely watched a movie where I was rooting for the entire cast to be killed just so it would end.