Jane Doe: Til Death Do Us Part

6/10 - clever mobster-themed Hallmark mystery is a decent watch

In " Jane Doe Till Death Do Us Part," Lea Thompson stars as a top-notch crime investigator in this compulsively watchable made-for-television mystery. Thompson plays Kathy Davis, a mild-mannered housewife. She is also the best in the business in her double life of "Jane Doe," an undercover investigative operative, which she keeps a secret from her family.

This film was interesting in the contrasting family scenes resembling the Brady Bunch and the police scenes involving Jane's investigation of an L.A. crime boss. The local godfather made a daring prison break by faking a heart attack and fleeing the Lompoc, California prison, and Jane Doe is able to get on his trail through careful crime reconstruction. Thompson shines in her role, and her best scene is when Jane adopts the disguise of an Italian vixen from Brooklyn worthy of "The Sopranos."

Armand Mastroianni, the director of this film, deserves to be mentioned in this review. The set-ups, camera angles, and colorful location filming in west Los Angeles evoke the film's effective atmosphere. The actors in both the family and crime stories are well-cast in their roles. Many of the run-of-the-mill films that appear on the various cable channels could learn a great deal from studying "Jane Doe Till Death Do Us Part." In the scripting, production values, and performances, this film was a cut above the regular television fare.

Thompson was successful in carrying the film. She resembles the fine actress Angie Dickinson, who played a similar role in her popular television series "Police Woman" in the 1970s. " Jane Doe Till Death Do Us Part " is all-too-predictable, and it suffers in places from lack of suspense. But Thompson was very effective in the convincing portrayal of a Mom leading two lives.

When a Mafia king-pin is found dead in the woods, buried with a gun covered with the prints of big-time arms dealer Louis Angelini, CSA boss Frank Darnell is able to arrest him and send him away from life. However Anelini offers to provide information that will stop a massive arms movement going through, so Darnell has him moved to a minimum-security prison. Once there, Angelini has a heart attack and dies in the hospital block but, in the time it takes the doctor to go and tell the warden and come back, the body has vanished. Knowing his ass is on the line over this puzzle, Darnell calls in former CSA agent, turned housewife, Cathy Davis to help him work out what happened.

My fourth bite of the undemanding but distracting Jane Doe pie didn't start with the same interesting idea that the other ones have done – usually they have a seemingly impossible crime or puzzle that serves as the starting point to Cathy coming in. Maybe it is because I've seen 24's Jack Bauer do it every couple of episodes for the past 5 years, but the whole "fake heart attack" didn't grab me as a mystery and thus the "hook" of the puzzle wasn't there early on. This still left a solid enough mystery story to be going along with but it was particularly average for the most part but did enough to satisfy genre fans. The family part of the story is a bit bigger than in other films and it involves husband Jack being suspicious of what Cathy and Frank are doing spending so much time together. This offered a chance at depth but it is handled in an obvious way, all superficial and all resolved far too easily.

The cast operate at the same level as the material and, although Mastroianni makes it all look good, nobody really does fantastically well. Thompson is a good lead, delivering what is asked of her – nothing more and nothing less. She doesn't really convince that often but she does enough to carry the generic material. Penny is again a welcome presence but his performance is far too one-note and I quickly tired of him continually popping up to do the same things over and over. Moses at least has something to do in this film but the material doesn't let him be a person – just a plot device, which he does but it isn't anything of note. Bologna is a nice addition but he doesn't do a great deal. The rest of the cast fill out the story and nobody is bad or good, they are just there.

Overall this is another distracting entry into the Jane Doe series albeit not one of the ones that works that well in regards the central "puzzle" premise. The cast, story and material are all OK and the delivery is slick and professional looking but the end result is pretty much by-the-numbers, which may still satisfy those coming to this expecting just that from the tvm series.