Family in Hiding

I was shocked to come and find this movie rated a 5. I've seen better movies scored lower. These reviews are seriously reaching. This movie of course is mediocre - I mean what can you expect? But the acting is just horrible, the plot is annoying, and I was hoping they would kill the daughters character off. I give it a solid 3.

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.

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.

A single mom witnesses a murder and the baddies are out to stop her testifying, so it's into the Witness Protection Program for the woman and her two kids. From that point the movie does its best to suggest how awful it is to be part of the program and how inefficient the people running it are. The funny thing is, at the end of the movie, out of the blue, it makes a statement about how effective the program is in keeping people safe and obtaining convictions. Which is it guys? You can't have it both ways.

Anyway, I digress.... There are certain things we have come to expect from made-for-TV movies: a clichéd plot, mediocre acting, corny dialogue, cardboard characters. This movie does not disappoint on any of those points. Let's face it, you've seen this sort of thing before, done much better. In fact, you could have written this script yourself. It doesn't offer anything new or anything special. Sometimes you might even have a chortle, although that definitely wasn't the producers intention. The best thing I can say about this movie is that it's not terrible. It's average.

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