Une famille en cavale

A woman witnesses the murder of a prosecutor by a criminal he is trying to convict. She informs the FBI, who then places her and her family in Witness Protection. And their lives are turned upside down. The agent tries to get the criminal but it seems he has someone in the FBI helping him. And when her daughter calls her boyfriend, it places her family in danger.

The script, storyline is done 100 times before. Acting not good either but not the worst i have seen. It was one of the most boring movies I have seen and I have seen a lot of movies. This goes in my bottom 100 movies I have seen. I had to fast forward to get through.

This is a TV movie I saw just today.

The story premise is nothing new. An innocent bystander sees a murder or other crime being committed. They are also seen by the "bad guys," but they escape and go to the cops. Then to protect themselves before they testify for the Feds, to protect themselves and their family, they go into the Witness Protection Program.

The acting of the leading adults in the film was fairly good, especially the family's mother. The rest of the family also did credible jobs. The acting and casting of the "bad guys" was pretty typical, but nothing to write home about. Overall however, the film rolled along for two hours fairly quickly, and did not have many real slow spots, which helped me with its rating.

It's not an "edge of your seat movie," by any means, but for a TV movie using fairly unknown actors, it wasn't bad. I have seen much worse movies that were made for the big screen and had "big name" casts and much higher budgets.

Carol Peterson's husband left her 14 years ago, though he got her pregnant when she was 19. With two kids to support, she had to learn to make it on her own, and she has been office manager at a Los Angeles insurance company for nine years. The price she has had to pay is being too busy to spend time with her family. Matt, for example, wins the big basketball game, but she arrives too late to see it happen. Alicia, who will soon turn 18, is too serious about Brian, in her mother's opinion. Of course, Carol is concerned that her daughter will end up like she did.

Carol witnesses the murder of U.S. Attorney Kanagawa by a major drug dealer, Roger Nahanee. Roger and his goons see her license plate, and he seems to have Chloe Sullivan working for him, so Carol and her family are not hard to find. Fortunately, the FBI get Carol and her family out of danger, at least temporarily. They go into the Witness Protection Program and have to change everything about themselves. Naturally, the kids don't like the idea of leaving their friends. Matt can't stand giving up basketball (what high school teams are still playing in April and May?), and Alicia misses Brian terribly.

First, the family ends up in Seattle, where they live in a house the kids consider a dump, though a lot of us live in places like that. I suppose when you've had the best of everything, it's hard to adjust, though surely these kids remember when their family struggled. I had a different image of the Witness Protection Program; Carol (Barbara?) can't even get a good job because she is hiding information about herself.

Mistakes are made. Not just by Matt/Bob and Alicia/Jennifer, who use poor judgment, but also by the FBI. Someone there is on Roger's payroll. So the family must move again, and again. Each time, they conveniently end up near the Canadian border. A look at the closing credits will explain why.

There is occasional excitement, and the final scenes are very exciting indeed.

I have to say the head villain, for all his smarts, uses extraordinarily bad judgment in one scene. Though that scene does manage to add some excitement.

This is nothing spectacular, but it is entertaining. There are funny moments, especially in the scenes where the family members must come up with new identities. There are tender moments such as Alicia's 18th birthday where the family finally gets to be a family, something they have neglected to do with their busy lives.

Brenda Strong is quite good, though I wish I had known it was her. I'm used to only hearing her, and she didn't give that over-the-top performance I'm used to. Elyse Levesque makes a very good whiny teenager. Not annoying at all. Just entertaining. And when given a challenge, she meets it. I wish I could say the same for Brett Dier. He is okay most of the time, but in one challenging scene, he's just annoying.

Jerry Wasserman does a good job as Agent Cloninger, who is in charge of the family's safety and care. Cloninger could have done a better job, but maybe it's not his fault. I guess he has to follow procedure, and procedure seems woefully inadequate.

I didn't catch the name of the most entertaining villain, but since someone said he sounded Russian, I'm going to say Raoul Ganeev. He's very good. A bumbling idiot at times, but also quite scary.

It's as good as your typical TV-movie.

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) raids a warehouse near Alhambra (this is in the Los Angeles, CA area), looking for a big narcotics dealer. After about ten minutes, wealthy and attractive divorcée Brenda Strong (as Carol Peterson) witnesses a related murder in her office's underground parking structure. She is able to identify the killer from FBI mug shots. He is on the loose and looking to silence Ms. Strong, so she and her children are placed in the Federal Witness Protection Program. This puts a strain on mature teenagers Elyse Levesque (as Alicia Peterson) and Brett Dier (as Matthew "Matt" Peterson). She is going to miss boyfriend Christopher Jacot (as Brian Jackson) and he won't be able to play basketball...

You know there are going to be problems when the Federal Witness Protection Program people give Strong a funny wig to wear whenever she leaves the house. Watching her run for the wig when someone visits the family is fun. Nobody expects criminals hunting the family might actually look in the windows and/or enter the home, because Strong does not wear the wig inside. The three main stars are cast very well and look like a family – however, the wig makes Strong look like she's wearing a wig to draw attention to herself. Bag guy Hrothgar Mathews (as Roger Nahanee) and his pals use basketball and the boyfriend to track he family, but they need only look for the woman in the obvious wig.

**** Family in Hiding (8/6/06) Timothy Bond ~ Brenda Strong, Elyse Levesque, Brett Dier, Hrothgar Mathews

Brenda Strong does it again - makes what would otherwise be a rather standard film something highly interesting and watchable. The unsung star of "Desperate Housewives" gets plenty of screen time here as she stars in "Family in Hiding", which is literally about a family in hiding.

Strong plays Carol Peterson, hard-working solo mother who witnesses the murder of a state attorney, and as the murderer and his gang uncover who she is, the FBI place her and her children into the Witness Protection Program. There, the lives of Carol and her children Matt and Alicia are turned upside down as they try to adjust to their new life while the murderer tracks them down.

Strong is, of course, fantastic, and the acting of pretty much everyone else in the film makes it a TV movie of considerably high standards. Brett Dier plays Matt, and I predict that he will go on to have a very prosperous acting career. Elyse Levesque does an admirable job playing Alicia. Christopher Jacot has a small role as Alicia's boyfriend Brian, and Gary Hetherington gives a good performance as the Peterson's handler in the program, Pritchard.

The Peterson family goes through all the emotions and possible scenarios of what one expects someone to go through if they have just bee uprooted from their lives and placed in a new city with new identities while a murderer hunts them down. This is one suspenseful drama with very little wrong with it, other than it is a bit slow in a couple of areas, and at times the production values are a bit low. Other than those minor issues, it is well worth a watch, especially for fans of Brenda Strong.