Determination of Death

This is a very good movie with lots of twists and turns in the plot. Veronica Hamel stars as an attorney whose brother-in-law dies while hunting with Hamel's husband.

What no one knows is that the evil brother-in-law and the wife he has abused planned to fake his death to get their hands on a $5 million insurance policy. Someone, however, would rather that his death be real, but a bullet only wounds him.

Insurance investigators William Katt and George Dzunda descend upon the family to investigate, since there's no body. Dzunda smells a rat; Katt is sympathetic towards Greene.

Marc Singer is the husband in a familiar role for him. Michele Greene is very good as his wife, and Hamel is always interesting to watch.

New information keeps popping up as the story goes along, making it not only more interesting, but much less straightforward as to what happened to Singer, who planned what, etc. The family turns out to be a lot more complex than it seems on the surface.

Very entertaining and absorbing, and you won't guess the ending.

Everyone is a suspect, everyone had a motive, everyone had plenty of reasons to kill that particularly beastly man who only made a nuisance of himself and destroyed everyone's lives, and yet the mystery of his death becomes unfathomable, everyone groping around in the dark for any clue without finding anything except loose ends, and yet it is all perfectly clear. The tempo is slow to begin with but gradually builds up into a tremendous pile of mysteries collapsing into nothingness, as actually everyone is more or less proved innocent or at least convincingly so. And yet there is still the final dot on the final i in the end.

The acting is gorgeous, everyone is absolutely convincing, Michele Greene almost takes the prize with hard competition from Veronica Hamel, not even Marc Singer is overacting, while I still would like to propose George Dzundza, the insurance agent with some experience, as the ultimate glory of the show. The dialog is terrific all the way, the music is excellent without being intruding, in brief, this is something of a perfect thriller.

The whodunit is a genre that has not fared well over the years. Murder, She Wrote is typical - uninteresting stories, poor acting (except, in M,SW, for the lead actress) and an unimaginative climax. This movie is the very rare exception. The story is quite good for a TV movie and the actors keep you engaged. Yes, Marc Singer's performance is over the top, but so is his character, as evil a villain as you'll find in any film. Singer is a fine actor, which makes his wildly intense bad guy a pleasure to watch. All of the other actors do a better than creditable job, and the ending is a genuine surprise and makes sense to boot. The writing is entertainingly manipulative, designed to keep you guessing and off the track. -- Remarkably, the movie never drags and everything going on is essential to the internal logic of the story - except of course for the obligatory love interest between Greene's and Katt's characters. And the use of flashbacks to the attempted murder is a bit overdone. But on the whole this film is far better paced and absorbing than 8 or 9 out of 10 of the TV thrillers turned out these days.

Not the best on TV movie lists. A stellar cast does mediocre job with bad script. I guessed the killer from the beginning. Won't reveal. A shame to make you watch this terrible movie to find out, but thoze the rules, baby. With the likes of Veronica Hamel as her usual cold look self, Michele Greene, a bit on the boring side, John Ratzenberger a bit on the over weight side, William Katt, looking middle aged these days, George Dzundza, looking like he's serious about this movie, Marty Papazian, looking like he doesn't know what's going on, Alice Hirson, looking like she's lost Ellen DeGeneras and Marc Singer giving an over the hill acting job. Way over the hill.

Now some of these actors are good actors. So you hate to see them do a bad job, but this script demands it from them. I hate to think of the money it cost to hire them, so my heart goes out to the producer.

I actually enjoy mad for TV movies of this type, but even I admit some are better than others. This was among the better ones I have seen.

The story was engaging and well told, the acting wasn't bad, it had some good plot twists, and the solution to the "crime" was a complete surprise! It managed to keep you guessing about what had happened till the very end.

Because the main point of the movie wasn't the abuse that Michelle Greene's character suffered, but more what she did about it, it wasn't sickeningly violent, at least not after the first 15 minutes or so.

Not a bad way to spend a couple of hours.