Shadow of a Scream

Caught this one on Showtime the other night. It is a serviceable "female cop goes undercover to investigate a suspected murderer/sex criminal" movie. Athena Massey is attractive and decent in the lead. Her rough sex loving cop boyfriend is a little annoying. I give it a 7, moving it up 2 points for the surprisingly nuanced performance by Baywatch's David Chokachi as the main suspect. Like the rest of the Baywatch cast, he was given little to do but look buff on that show. But he can act. His stunning good looks and physique do get in the way a little though.

For the most part, the acting was surprisingly good, considering the material the actors had to work with. The lovely Athena Massey especially falls into this category. She played emotional moments pretty darn well, and the few times she didn't seem so good, she was having to say some really terrible lines. David Chokachi was okay. Sometimes it's hard to tell when someone's playing a weirdo. Cyril O'Reilly was the one who was really not very good. I know, he was playing a weirdo, too, but he did not pull it off. Carol Hunt was just fine in a small part, as was Maria Tecce. (I've never heard of any of these actors besides Massey.) There are probably better ways to spend 90 minutes than with this film.

Look, I don't expect much from my "lady cop goes undercover to nab killer" movies, and thank God, because this movie lives up to my low expectations. Nothing new here, folks. Move along. Lady cop tries to capture a suspected serial killer. Look, you ALL know how it's going to go. She'll fall in love with him. They ALWAYS fall in love with the suspect. Is he the killer? Or is he being framed? Or is the boyfriend the real killer? It don't take no rocket scientist to guess. If you've seen one, you've seen them all.

i may be a little twisted in my tastes but i found this dark and sexy thriller (which i saw in the UK under the title Criminal Pursuit) quite exciting in places (if you know what i mean). Athena Massey is very strong and sexy as the cop who becomes infatuated with a murder suspect (and i must admit her penchant for very kinky sex was hot to watch- especially the credits sequence where she's roughly hammered by her boyfriend from behind after a little kinky bondage). However, in the UK version, i noticed several strange jumps (usually in sexy/violent scenes) was it cut pre-release or is there a longer version somewhere. the one i saw was 87 minutes.