Histoire trouble

A mediocre movie at best. The plot has promise – kidnapping, adultery, and a psychic FBI agent – but something falls apart in the execution of the concept for a film into an actual theatrical event. Must be the screen writing. The story drags at times and it seems like an eternity before the heroes can figure out what the viewer has already determined as obvious. And that is with the aid of a psychic detective – the scenes where she senses what has occurred are interesting but do not result in moving the storyline forward by leaps and bounds. But then the summing up at the end dumps a whole lot of facts on the viewer that seems to come from nowhere. Then too there is the parallel plot of medical problems with the heroine that remains unresolved at the end.

Let's review what is good about the movie. Shauna Black is certainly nice to look at but one can only wish that Laura Vandervoort would have had a larger part. The "ending" that opens the movie is revealed to be an incomplete truth about three quarters the way through and the real ending could have been a real show stopper. Jennifer Beals does yeoman's work with the material she has been handed – she deserves better. Finally the movie yields the best-dressed software company secretary in many years.

Not much to recommend here.

Jennifer Beals carries this movie through to acceptability, but everyone, including the character Beals portrays, has a wooden aura about them in this low budget mystery about a bunch of depraved, rich stiffs investigated by glum FBI stiffs. This movie may take the record for the having the most unlikable characters. Beals as well as her character manage to pull it off without much support. The far-fetched but still satisfying ending makes suffering through the clunky build-up barely worth it.

A little girl was taken from her room. The kidnapping has revealed a few other secrets about this model family. The mother's elicit affair, some mysteriously missing characters from their past, and a family friend who seems too close for comfort. I found this movie very poorly acted; this was accentuated by the poor dialog. The film also had quite a few scattered subplots and characters. Special Agent Beck, who was leading the FBI in solving the case was involved in an accident that gave her second sight. This 'ability' did not add anything to the plot - it would've made it more exciting if they had actually figured things out naturally, as Agents do. To me, it was just a weak way of solving a mystery. There also were some character who didn't add anything to the direction of the movie. They weren't antagonist, nor did they really help any of the situations. Despite all this, I had to watch the film till the end. Perhaps Im just a sucker for cheap thrillers, but in either case, it was an easy and forgettable guilty pleasure.

In general, viewers enjoy watching police movies when they are synchronized with the police's struggles and fine deductions. However, Agent Beck's psychics represents all answers out of the blue, with no significant police works made. I felt like I was skimming a mystery book from the back. You will see a twist in the last 10 minutes, but it was cheesy and frustrating with little content related with the entire story. In short, a terrible unstructured script.

I watched this via Amazon Prime and within 15 minutes was saying to myself, "This seems like a Lifetime movie." Well, doh, of course that's exactly what it is - lousy plot, mediocre writing and barely adequate acting. Why are these Canadian productions frequently so blah? Since The L Word, has Jennifer Beales had any role that suited her? She deserves better.