The Secret Pact

First off, this movie is not a comedy. It's very serious. Keeping that in mind, read on.

Lenny is a sweet-natured orphan raised on the streets, but he's also a teenage hitman-in-training who is sent to find the only witness to a mob hit. The witness, Greg, also a teenager, is now under FBI protection and attending a prep boarding school in Montreal.

Apparently Lenny's wise guy foster dad, who gave him the assignment, managed to find out where Greg was but couldn't supply a photo (the Mafia isn't as sharp as it used to be), so it's up to Lenny to enroll in the school, go to classes, participate in school activities, and figure out which kid is Greg.

Right. This could happen. In real life. Yes, indeed.

Then there's Lenny's dyslexia, which makes him feel bad about himself. (Training to be a hitman evidently doesn't harm his self-esteem, however.) My favorite part of the movie is when the school counsellor, having noticed that Lenny can't read, gives him a pamphlet on dyslexia for him to -- yes! READ!!

The bad guys send a kid to a prestigious boys' school to find the student who is in the witness protection program, for the usual reasons. Of course, this kid doesn't fit in,socially or otherwise. He tries to befriend the studens in an effort to eliminate, by "friendly" questioning, the possible students on his list. Don''t want to spoil plot by saying more. The student "infiltrator", taught never to trust anyone, is presented as multi-dimensional, and is affected by the other students. Good suspense, excellent characters,and gives insight into how one's upbringing affects who you are.

I really wanted to like this story and was willing to suspend disbelief but this film just had too many continuity/believability problems to allow that for long.

The two leads are both attractive young men and it was fun watching their friendship form. It was also fun watching the inter-relationships between the other boys but I kept getting distracted by just how unlikely the plot devices were. Also, the next time a head master of a distinguished private school is giving a speech and the best literary reference that he can make in his speech is a lame reference to Great Expectations perhaps the head master's speech should be written out.

Before watching this I'd recommend School Ties (1992) or Dead Poets Society (1989) or The Emperor's Club (2002) or even A Separate Peace (2004) (TV) All have much more convincing plot lines than this.

In two separate spots the "villain" is about to be lurking just around the corner when something saves him. The villain is looking for one kid on a list of about 8 and the kid we KNOW he's looking for keeps making obvious mistakes that would clue in anyone who was really looking in a heartbeat. e.g. claiming to be from Tampa and not knowing whether its on the Atlantic or the Gulf. It also bothered me how dyslexia was tossed about as a plot point without any real understanding or compassion.

The actors did great with what they had to work with but this could have really used at least one more script revision before it got shot.

Greg Sherman (Adam Frost) witnesses his parents' murders by gunmen. His corrupt father was cooperating against crime boss Dominic Patton (Nick Mancuso). Jerome Carver (John Heard) puts him into witness protection as Steven Spencer attending a private boys' school in Montreal. Patton tracks down his location. With limited photograph of Greg, the hired gunmen have to narrow down the target. Greg befriends fellow newbie Lenny Dalton (Rider Strong).

Everything screams cheaper Canadian movie. The adults get side scenes. Rider Strong coming off of Boy Meets World is probably the only one of the kids who shows any spark. The perfunctory lead Adam Frost is a bit of a stiff although his character doesn't help. It boils down to Rider Strong and an intriguing twist. It's also intriguing to turn the traditional point of view inside out although this would probably work better to stay with traditional lead character Greg. Just switch the actors playing them. The other way to do this is to keep Greg a mystery. That way, the audience is figuring it out along with Lenny. Either way would be better.

This movie was one of twelve under the umbrella title "Tales of Intrigue" made by Allegro Films for a Canadian pay TV network. I haven't seen any of the others, but I have a strong feeling from this entry that the others are pretty poor just like this one. I have to agree with the other user commenters that the script has a number of, "Oh, come on now!" moments, starting from the first scene. While one may think from what I just said in the previous paragraph that the movie may be unintentionally campy, it isn't. It's an extremely slow, heavily padded story with no tension at any point, and you'll be able to predict what will happen long before it happens. I guess the production values are passable for a Canadian TV movie effort, and the movie gets a few points for being the rare Canadian movie that is actually set (mostly) in Canada. But it's only worth watching for those non-Canadians who may be wondering why most Canadians don't embrace their nation's movies and television shows.