The Front

The Front is a bit trite as far as the plot goes, but most characters have depth enough to make watching this Lifetime movie worth watching.

Daniel Sunjata makes an interesting detective, and he seems at ease with his role. Diahann Carroll also has an interesting character as Sunjata's grandmother. Ashley Williams has an adequately damaged character but her performance is a bit thin in places but fine in others. Andie MacDowell is very sleazy and a bit one-dimensional. Patricia Cornwell makes a cameo appearance. Dane Dehann stands out in his portrayal.

While the characters have depth, their dialog doesn't. That is the norm for this type of production. These films get made without a prolonged effort. It is a four-door sedan of a movie. Don't set your expectations too high and you won't be disappointed by the film.

When I put this disc into the machine, I saw something that made my blood run cold: Lifetime.

So I have no excuse. I knew what I was in for.

The film is based on a novel by Patricia Cornwall, a very good and popular mystery novelist. She, like Mary Higgins Clark, had her books, or at least this one, sold to a cheesy production company. I'll never understand how some authors get top film productions and others are relegated to bad TV movies.

"The Front" concerns a detective (Daniel Sunjata) in Boston who is assigned by the randy female DA to an old murder case, similar to that committed by the Boston Strangler. Complications follow.

The acting ranges from fair to pathetic, with some good people wasted -- Diahann Carroll and Daniel Sunjata, specifically. Andie MacDowell as a DA was a mistake.

This is one of those unfortunate cases where you didn't care what happened to anyone, except maybe the Sunjata character.

In Boston, a killer is on the loose and possibly copying the Strangler. Police detective Win Garano (Daniel Sunjata) takes on the case since his grandmother lives nearby. District Attorney Monique Lamont (Andie MacDowell) is politically ambitious and running for re-election. She assigns the one-legged Stump (Ashley Williams) to be his partner. Stump had helped found FRONT, a neighborhood watch police program, but Lamont had tried to co-op it. There is creepy guy Cal Tradd (Dane DeHaan) and a mime dressed as Raggedy Ann.

I'm guessing this is part of a series and these characters have a history. The movie doesn't take much time setting them up but it's easy to figure it out. This is standard police drama without much intensity. It simply feels inferior in many ways. There are a couple of reveals but they don't excite me much. It starts off badly with the very silly Raggedy Ann. It puts the movie in an awkward position. The look is lower level TV.

This is a terrible made for TV film and does not do the author Patricia Cornwell justice. I love murder mystery films but watching this was a complete waste of two hours. The acting was really poor and the plot, although it may have worked in the book definitely did not translate well to the screen.

The characters were weak and quite unbelievable. I was left feeling I didn't quite get something, but actually there wasn't anything to get. I didn't care about the characters or what happened to them.

The plot centres around a police officers investigation of an old case. This is brought into the current by a similar crime occurring. The police officer is an OK actor but Andie McDowell is very poor as the DA and you really do not care what happens to her.

All in all not a good choice.

Do not waste an evening watching this film you will be disappointed!

This movie debuted on the Lifetime network last week in the states. I had never read a Patricia Cornwell novel, and it had been ages since I'd seen an Andie MacDowell movie. Having missed the premiere of Cornwell's "At Risk" on the same network the week before, I have just these few observations.

1. "The Front" assumes some familiarity with either Cornwell's characters or (I assume) the previous film. In "The Front," one must listen carefully for clues, not just with respect to the mystery, but regarding the identity of the characters and their relationships, as well.

2. Of the two principal actors, MacDowell and Daniel Sunjata, the latter presents the better performance. I'm sorry, but MacDowell's D.A., Monique Lamont, just didn't convince me as worthy of her office. In fact, I can't imagine how she ever got elected. (Or, as the governor's mistress, did she somehow get appointed?)

3. The dialog is sometimes so rapid-fire as to be unintelligible. In some scenes, notably early scenes between Sunjata's Win Garano (D.A.'s investigator) and Ashley Williams' "Stump" (cop), the conversation runs faster than that of some Harvard students I once knew, as if director Tom McLoughlin is trying to squeeze in all the words in the time allotted.

In short, this movie is probably not the easiest one with which to familiarize one's self with the work of Partricia Cornwell.