Shadow of Fear - L'engrenage

I liked this movie. I even watched it a second time so that I could catch the little things I missed the first time around. I suppose it was a lame plot with lame actors (average B movie), but I liked it. James Spader plays his usual sleaze-ball rich guy and as usual, he does so quite well. I thought he was pretty tricky in the way he trapped society's best. I have to admit I was a bit confused the first time through as to the exact purpose of the Tuesday meetings--things became clearer as the movie progressed. Overall I thought the "secret Tuesday society" was a pretty cool (albeit sick) idea. The ending was very cool and worth the wait. I love murder mysteries and this was a good smooth-flowing storyline.

"Shadow of Fear" has some pretty good production values for a low budget direct to DVD movie. It also has some decent acting by the various participants on the screen. Unfortunately, it's hard to build any enthusiasm for the rest of the movie. The story elements and the characters are often so murky that it's hard to understand what is going on at times. It's like starting a novel at chapter 3, since a lot of the elements in the movie movie go are never explained at all. Some elements are (eventually) explained, but much of the movie remains confusing. What went wrong here? Since I find it hard to believe that production would go ahead on an incoherent screenplay, I suspect that the original cut of the movie ran a lot longer, and when the movie was subsequently cut down to run at a more reasonable length, a lot of explanation was removed. It's too bad, because there are signs that the original cut would have been engaging despite its length. You'd be better off waiting for a director's cut instead of watching the movie as it is right now.

Rick Cowan's "Shadow of Fear" showed up on cable recently. The only thing that attracted us to watch it was the presence of James Spader, Peter Coyote and Aidan Quinn, perhaps the best known actors in the cast. This film written by Matthew Hollaway and Arthur Marcum, will test even the most patient viewer's patience! First of all, the screen play is vague in explaining what we are watching.

The opening sequence shows us Harrison sitting near the table where his father-in-law and his cronies, presided by the creepy William Ashbury are discussing things that probably Harrison can hear, yet, he is not invited to participate in the discussion. He is given a drink, but when he goes to pay, the waiter shows him that it's already been paid by Ashbury. He then goes home on a rain storm. The moment he gets distracted, he hits the man standing in the middle of the road. What to do? Call the police? No, instead Harrison disposes the body not too far from the road, a move that will carry terrible consequences for this young man.

This being said, sounds like the premise of a good mystery film, but instead, the writers have complicated the story in such a way, that at times, one wonders with incredulity all the twists and turns in a plot that doesn't ultimately prove anything at all. By not making clear the activities of the group, we start losing interest in the film, and nothing that is done later on to explain why everything happened makes sense.

James Spader doesn't add anything to his otherwise excellent career in the movies. Ditto for Peter Coyote, Aidan Quinn, and the rest of the cast. Matthew Davis who is at the center of the story appears to be miscast for the role of Harrison. Perhaps with a stronger lead could have made more sense.

I'm surprised this movie has got such a high rating. It starts out very promising with some nice images in the rain. In fact, it is extremely fascinating about until the time when he gets back to his wife and they begin talking. After that the movie falls apart little by little, until it becomes so borderline non-sensible that I just had to turn it off. It is not a matter of "plot twists" as some viewer suggested. Obviously, it is a question of just not being able to put a decent plot together. I see an alarming trend in the new DVD-market where many movies are put out quicker and easier to DVD than it was possible in the good old video days. American horror has suffered in recent years, and did not improve with the pathetic remakes of brilliant Asian horror. Anyway, "Shadow of Fear" is not a horror-movie. It is hardly even a movie. If it had only lasted until he got back to his wife, and she then turned into a demon or something; then it would have been a good "Twilight Zone"-episode but when a movie-plot collapses like that in one superfluous scene after the other then it becomes irrelevant to watch. As one viewer suggested, we are never told what this "organisation" does. I think, this is a major problem. On the back of the DVD it said something about a secret "cult"-organisation with big power. It sounded promising but in the movie this organisation seems completely devoid of power, so what's the point?

***SPOILERS*** Convaluted suspense drama that gets more and more confusing as it goes along with a conclusion that had to be inserted in since it makes no real sense at all to what you saw up until then. Being a member of this secret society headed by reclusive and weird high-power attorney William Ashbury, James Spader, young Harrison France, Matthew Davis, learns right away what is needed for him to belong to that secretive group; Ashbury having the goods on you and using them to make you do whatever he want's you to do.

Having trouble paying off the mortgage and also having a big real-estate deal fall through Harrison is up sh*t's creek with him too embarrassed to ask his father-in-law Congressman Henderson (Peter Coyote), also a member of this secret society, for help. Driving home in a rain storm Harrison hit's this stranger on a lonely country road and finds out that he killed him.

Panic-stricken Harrison pulls the dead body off the deserted road and hides it in the brush as he drives home feeling that whatever happened is between him and his conscience and no one else; until the next morning when he sees the news. A bank robbery took place the day before and two men got away with $200,000.00 but the bank security camera video taped one of the robbers who was dressed,in a black hood and leather jacket, a lot like the person that he ran over the previous evening.

Realizing that he must have run down one of the the robbers of the bank Harrison goes back to the underbrush where he hid the strangers body and finds a sack with the stolen $200,000.00 in it. Burying the robbers clothes on his property it's later dug up by his dog Shane, William Shakesbear, which alerts Harrison's wife Wynn, Robin Tunney, in thinking that it somehow has to do with the bank robbery! Also that Harrison, being in debt and desperate for quick cash, may have been involved in it; later Wynn throws it, the dug up clothes, off a local bridge into the river.

It's now when the story takes a very strange turn when it's discovered that the person that Harrison killed is, after DNA tests proved it beyond a doubt, non-other then Chris Henderson Harrison's brother-in-law a local town junkie and petty criminal. It's then when things starts to get bizarre for Harrison with Ashbury coming to his aid to help even though he never told him anything about his accident.

Harrison took the $200,000.00 and put it in a bus station locker but Ashbury had him photographed doing it where he could use the photos to blackmail him. Picked up by the police, who Ashbury obviously tipped off, poor Harrison is interrogated by Det. Schfield, Aidan Quinn. Just when it looked like he was going to crack and confess for Chris' death or murder as well as the armed robbery of the bank Schfield's boss chief Webb, John Grant Philips, comes into the interrogation room and tells Harrison that he can go free. There Ashbury again came to Harrison's rescue by getting this pasty Patrick Treadway a homeless drunk and drifter to go to the bus locker and take out the money, or half of it,out and have him photographed! Showing that Harrison had nothing to do with the bank robbery or Chris' death!

Now if you think that the movie was strange up until then it gets even stranger when Harrison later being at a social gathering, with his wife and father-in-law, goes up to Ashbury's suite in the hotel where the gathering was taking place. there he finds that Chris Henderson, whom he though he killed in a road accident and hid his body, is really alive and staying with Ashbury in his hotel room! Then who did he, or did not, kill that dark rainy evening?

The film completely falls apart after that in trying to make Harrison French into some kind of avenger and have him concoct this unbelievable plan to turn the tables on the conniving Ashbury and have him face the music that he forced him and all the other members of his weird society to face all these years.

The ending taking place on the same road, and even in a likewise rain storm, where all the troubles for Harrison began in the movie is so outrageous that you wonder if "Shadow of Fear" wasn't really meant to be a comedy instead of a suspense drama and that the real story got lost during the final rushes and editing of the film.