Beneath the Leaves

Wow... For all the great actors in this movie. What happen? Didn't like the script or the Director? Zero chemistry and their married. Aaron Farb Long Gressy Hair was so disgusting that I stop eating my popcorn. You couldn't wash it, and slick you're hair back for the movie? Why couldn't you get Your cut. You just came back from undercover, Your not believable as a cop. Sorry... This movie is so hard to watch. I feel so bad for the producers who had to pay all this money for horrible acting...

I don't know why this was made. Poorly acted and bad script. Highlight is watching the cliches fly through the plot. Love Mira Sorvino. But this was just a mess.

The movie started out ok. I mean, I knew it was sort of a B movie to begin with, so I was ready for some good B movie action.

It was not to be.

The film quickly lost its way, meandering here and there and never really exploring anything at all.

The acting wasn't bad, but no one really stood out. The characters were shallow and not very well written.

I managed to get through it, but just barely.

I gave it 3 stars, but 2 1/2 of those are just because I like Paul Sorvino.

First of all Mira Sorvino is always going to add to any films credibility. This is not her first rodeo playing a crime fighter. I recall her starring as an ICE Agent in the 2005 TV Mini-Series, Human Trafficking, and she held her own in that dramatic film series.

Having said that Mira Sorvino is somewhat wasted in this low budget film by todays standards THRILLER. I don't know what the films director was thinking when Detective Erica Shotwell (Mira Sorvino) walked through some parts of the investigation wearing a mans hat on her head? It looked ridiculous. But I digress. Back to the plot. There is a psycho on the loose after a prison break and in a vaguely similar style to the 1996 film title, Sleepers, there is an abuser of young boys who have to find a way to survive their past horrors and then re-live those memories when this psycho breaks out of prison.

Mira Sorvinos cop partner is Detective Brian Larson, (Kristoffer Polaha) who has a bit of a drinking problem which is his cross to bare after being one of the four young boys who survived the psycho predator who held him and three other boys in his torture chamber.

The script had all the makings of a good story, as well as casting Mira Sorvino in a lead role, her father Paul Sorvino as the precincts Captain, and her husband Christopher Backus as another one of the four tortured boys living with their nightmares from their horrific childhood(s).

It's just too bad that the on screen film just wasn't so thrilling as maybe the script could have been. Therefore I give this film a ho hum 5 out of 10 IMDb rating.

Greetings again from the darkness. It doesn't happen often, so it's probably kind of fun for them when a father and daughter are able to appear in the same film. This is writer-director Adam Marino's first feature film, and he cast Paul Sorvino and Mira Sorvino not as father-daughter, but as Police Captain and Detective. The script, co-written by Marino, Naman Barsoon, Daniel Wallner, and Mark Andrew Wilson treads familiar, yet usually interesting ground ... a crime topic covered previously by numerous TV shows and movies.

The film opens with an abusive father (Don Swayze) doing despicable things to his young son and daughter, before the two of them take action against him. We then flash forward to a prison escape that occurred after a fire is set. One of the escapees is an especially demented psychopath with a trait that ties the story back into the opening sequence. What follows is a whodunit police procedural that focuses on Detective Erica Shotwell (Oscar winner Ms. Sorvino) and the four boys who survived their encounter with the twisted prison escapee some 15 years ago. Doug Jones plays James Whitley, the prison escapee returning to finish the job on the 4 that got away. Mr. Jones is best known for his fabulous "creature" work in THE SHAPE OF WATER and PAN'S LABRYNTH.

The four boys, now grown men, are played by Ser'Darius Blain, Christopher Backus, Christopher Masterson, and Kristopher Polaha, the latter of which is now Detective Shotwell's partner ... though, against his vociferous protests, is prohibited by the Chief from working the case that he is oh-so-close to. Also providing support work are Melora Walters, Jena Sims, and fingernails in general. Director Marino's film is mostly B-level material, and actually much milder than what we see on many TV shows these days. It does, however, reinforce the notion that screwed up kids quite frequently grow into screwed up adults.