The Devil's Teardrop

Occasionally, a movie comes along that combines several positive qualities, leading to only one conclusion: this is a very good film. Such is the case with "The Devil's Teardrop" (2010). First off, Tom Everett Scott of high acclaim for such performances as the enthusiastic drummer in "That Thing You Do" stars as a highly specialized/talented forensic analyst and work-from-home single dad of 2 grade-school children, being sought out to assist the FBI on a shoot-em-up ransom scheme by a domestic terrorist in Washington DC.

No one can say Scott doesn't fully carry this movie, start to finish, with his convincing charm and top-notch portrayal of a dedicated father helping his young son work through a trauma from the recent past, involving a gun-toting home invader that Scott"s character Kincaid fights with and kills right in their home. Scott does a magnificent job and rises as the primary quality that makes this a good film.

Natasha Henstridge as FBI Lead Agent Margaret Lukas also does a fine job seeking the terrorist while working with positive chemistry with Kincaid. So too Kincaid's ex-wife Joan, well played by Rena Sofer, a fine acting job as a loving mother who has fully recovered after 2 years from alcohol-related emotional trauma and is now engaged to be married and seeking full custody of the 2 kids. So there's family drama in this film, genuine efforts to remain civilized for the best interests of the children - how's that for something different in our film world of dysfunction, anger-ridden self-centered adults using kids as pawns instead of guarding them as impressionable young human beings?

Very nice cinematography in the DC area; a pleasing soundtrack with complementary music and editing by Ron Wisman to stitch a strong storyline together seamlessly, and you've got a nice piece of filmmaking, effectively directed by Norma Bailey.

Make no mistake: this is a wholesome Hallmark-Type, Lifetime-Styled movie with the ultimate goal of presenting functional adults who care more for the children than anything else. What a concept, huh? And not a single cuss word in the entire film. What a concept, huh?

Well, got to tell you why:

1) Their screenplays always with very bad dialog, making every character's speaking and talking a bit of unreal, like recited from memory, and everybody speaking with pure American English without any accent. Nobody got any background accent like everybody grew up in the same house, same school, same neighborhood, same area, same city and same State.

2) Horrible nonsensical sound track. The background music in every movie alwayssounded like the same. Lot of time the sound track started without anynecessity and stopped abruptly without any reason.

3) The funny thing is every role in the Lifetime movies is just so polite and sounds like well educated.

4) The female characters are always played by pretty women, you just can't find any ugly ones, even the young kids are pretty.

5) Very lame directing.

This movie is no exception. You might get brain tumor if you force yourself to keep watching it, just by listening to the pure American English without any accent by everybody would drive you nuts.

The story is based on a Jeffrey Deaver Novel. This detective mystery has Hallmark written all over it. It even has the same background noise ... oops music. It is machine made for the Proles. With standard dialog and standard predictable twists. You can tell it is TV and may even be a pilot for a series "Paper tells the tales."

Well, we have a mass killing at a train station. The person in charge of the killer named "Digger", said Digger will kill again if he does not get a good sum of money. Now where have we heard this one before. Wait for it here comes the twist the makes the movie.

The person that controls "the digger" meats with a traffic accident (yeh sure.) Now the only clue is a letter left telling where to make the drop-off. O. K. Do not get ahead of me. Only one person in the world can tell who the Digger is and what he is up to by analyzing the letter. That person is ex FBI and had problems with doing that sort of thing for them. Naturally a blond cutie FBI person pulls on his heart strings and gets him to do his thing.

Now we sit back and watch the thriller unfold.

I look forward to Natasha Henstridge in Lifetime or Hallmark movies - she makes it a bit more of an A list cast. She plays an FBI agent investigating a mass shooting who threatens to do it again unless he is paid some ransoms. Strangely they seem to want to negotiate with terrorists. Tom Everett Scott another better than Lifetime actor plays an expert on documents who can help find the criminals but has retired because of some traumatic incident involving his kid.

This is a better than usual Lifetime thriller especially since mass shootings are in the forefront of the news these days. Liked the ending - neat and feel good.

First off, this is a typical Lifetime movie. Both the acting and dialogue is so-so. That having been said, I don't regret seeing this film.

This film is based off a book by Jeffrey Deaver and does maintain his use of a twist and a sinister villain. Like I said, the film isn't top notch but for fans of Deaver's, his story elements aren't betrayed. I also thought the subplot about the main character's custody battle and the reasons he didn't want to go back to helping law enforcement were well handed.

I guess what I'm saying is the core is good, even if the execution is not.