No Good Deed

I read a lot of reviews before watching, and truly was surprised as this movie was MUCH better than the detractors let on. The acting is great, the storyline, though part of a formulaic genre, is well thought out and moves at a great pace, the dynamic of action/release/suspense/reveal is well timed, and unless you're unbelievably difficult to entertain, you'll not want to be interrupted during any part of this film. Are there plot holes? We debated this and decided it's truly up to your point of view, but the events are actually all completely plausible. Summarily, unless you go into movies for the sole intent of picking them apart and finding things to not like, I guarantee you will be surprised, uncomfortable, freaked out, worried, excited, and ultimately entertained by No Good Deed.

While this wasn't anything special, it definitely wasn't as bad as I expected it to be. The leads do an excellent job in their respective roles, which is coupled nicely with solid writing. The first act is nothing to write home about, and the movie felt like it was dragging towards the end, it was still relatively entertaining. All in all, a pretty standard cat/and-mouse tale, decent to throw on for movie night.

The story portrayed in this film is pretty much spelled out in the trailer. Crazy escaped convict terrorizes a woman and her kids. That's pretty much it, but there is a nasty little twist in the story that I did not see coming (although I did have a feeling). You know…. When you ask yourself "surely it isn't this" and come to find out …. Oh yes, it is. I have to give Colin (Indris Elba) a lot of credit for playing it super cool to make his way into the house. Although you knew he was the "bad" guy who is eventually going to snap, you kind of find yourself liking him for a little while (with his fine self). Terri (Taraji P. Henson) was a relatively smart women who made some serious errors at the beginning of the film, but had I not known in advance what was going to happen, I probably would not have thought that she did anything wrong. She was just trying to be nice and do the right thing. Meg (Leslie Bibb) is Terri's best friend and she drove home the point that no one knows you better than your best friend. At first I thought that she was going to be a little ditzy, but she proved me wrong. Jeffrey (Henry Simmons) is Terri's husband who does not seemed to be vested in the relationship. This is very apparent right from the beginning. I went to the 2nd showing on the day the film was released and I have to say that the theater was pretty well populated. The one thing that I have to say about seeing a film with a diverse crowd is that folks talk (out loud) to the people on the screen (myself included). Toward the end of the film I heard myself saying "how does she think that's going to work" and then immediately after that I said "why does he think that worked"…... you'll see what I mean when you go to see it. Other than that, there are three reasons why I liked this film…., the great lead characters, the consistent flow of the film and finally the whole story was told in around 90 minutes. This is director Sam Miller's first attempt at a widely distributed feature film and I think that he did a pretty good job. I would recommend it to a friend.

Idris Elba was the man, as a psychotic woman hating murderer who escapes jail and through a series of events, cross paths with Terri, played by Taraji P. Henson, who's was in a troubled marriage and vulnerable to the killer's charms.

It Reminded me of the 1986 movie, Extremities with Farrah Fawcett as the female victim being taken hostage by a criminal looking to steal her "goodies"

I thought No good deed was a lot more cleaver than most movies of this kind. In certain places, it has to fall into line of genre's plot (woman alone in the house without her man, then a scary bad boy comes to the door and charms his way into the lonely women's house), but the movie surprised me by putting a little ore substance into the female victim, by making her life more interesting than usual, and it helps having an Oscar nominee like Ms. Hensen play the role. A fact that was not used to advertise the movie as much as it should have. Definitely a better played out Victim than I've seen before.

A decent plot and a great thriller. I recommend giving it a shot.

Even after having watched the trailer you'll be in for lots of surprises. There were a few things I didn't see coming, subtle twists and turns which caught me off guard. Idris and Taraji have great chemistry on screen, you want to watch them and you don't get bored watching them.

I love to see films with black people in them, which have nothing to do with race or where race isn't even mentioned once. You literally could have placed any one from any ethnic background in any of those characters and it would have worked.

This movie re-enforced to me that Taraji and Idris are really good actors, I got my money's worth. I went to see the movie at the Grove where there are lots of tourists and people from all over the country, who have normal reactions to what they see on the screen. The audience as a whole cared a lot about Taraji's character, they cheered for her when she was winning and they had natural human responses that were real, and so at the end of the day, that says to me all the people involved in making this movie did their job. Seeing the film there got me avoiding the jaded Hollywood movie "experts" on cinema with their snobby intellectual bully b.s, I was with regular people at a movie theater, the reason actors make movies to begin with, the people who are funding our industry with their hard earned dollars, not movie critics who go the movies for intellectual stimulation instead of reading a freaking book. You're gonna like Taraji's bff, she has a great moment with Idris that has everyone who has a best friend going "YOU TELL IT."

I personally love to go see a movie and turn off my brain and enjoy myself and you get to do this with this movie, it kept my attention from beginning to end. Go see it, worth your money!