Broken Promise

In the summer of 1992, teenagers "Mina" and "Rese" arrive at what they believe is a vacant mansion. While fooling around, they are surprised to discover the mansion isn't unoccupied. This leads to an unfortunate incident. Twenty-two years later, attractive blonde social worker Ashley Scott (as Mina) meets with a young man. There is nothing to help us understand who the woman is or why we are seeing her interact with the young man. Let's help. First, the young man has absolutely nothing to do with the story. Second, the woman is supposed to be an older version of the young woman who we saw in the opening scenes. Although she doesn't appear anything like her role, Ms. Scott looks like she's worth a 22-year wait...

The beautiful blonde social worker played by Scott has done exceptionally well in life. Check out her swimming pool. She is married to handsome Brookfield, CA sheriff Nick Baillie (as Benjamin "Ben" Gardner). They have a slightly rebellious, mature-looking 16-year-old daughter, Lorynn York (as Hali). Scott's life is disrupted when old boyfriend Louis Mandylor (as Reese Sinclair), from the unfortunate opening crime, is paroled. He wants to pick up where the young couple left off, refusing to accept a "Broken Promise" from Scott. She vowed to wait for him, but moved on with her life...

Now, if you accept the absurdity of the crime, this TV movie had potential. Written by Steven Palmer Peterson, the story gets off to a bad start with the poor opening; specifically, the "murder" doesn't make sense as a murder. You don't have to be "Columbo" to see the so-called killing is an accident. They could have moved the actors into different positions for the crime scene. The piece of wood should identified as magical; it changes position with every shot, in a continuity error...

The strangest continuity slip-up occurs later, when amorous ex-con Mandylor trades in his bright yellow Chevy El Camino for a park scene. You're thinking he sold one of the movie's main attractions, but the car inexplicably returns for all future scenes. While the performers have trouble convincing and the story fabric is frayed, Mandylor does manage well and director Nadeem Soumah makes it look pleasant. The music by David Findlay helps, too.

**** Broken Promise (2/13/2016) Nadeem Soumah ~ Ashley Scott, Louis Mandylor, Nick Baillie, Lorynn York

I can see that the director and/or writer of this movie was definitely a fan of Cape Fear with Robert DeNiro. The shots of the bad guy standing near his classic car and the music all are taken from Cape Fear(1991), in my opinion. They even had similar relationships between the characters and the dramatic tone of the movie.

I found this to be kind of cringeworthy because Cape Fear is a great movie and it is embarrassing thinking they just made a cheaper quality, average acted movie. That being said, it wasn't a terrible movie at all, but not real good either. If it had been a more original script and not influenced so much by Cape Fear, I think I would have respected it more.

The moral of the story is, don't do prison time for selfish bitches. Indeed it's NEVER a good idea to do time for a crime you didn't commit. That being said, this is the first stalker movie I've seen in ages where the stalker's motive isn't completely ridiculous. Arguably his position is TOO sympathetic, because if you do time for somebody, typically not just the expectation, but the OBLIGATION is a quid pro quo result.

If the mother wasn't going to stay in a relationship with the guy, she should have turned herself in from the start, but instead she let him serve a full sentence for a crime he didn't commit. That kind of makes the protagonist in this story SO much worse than the antagonist, not to mention the fact that she killed a guy on his own property within the opening minutes of the film. The irony I suppose, is letting the guy kill her boyfriend would have in fact probably made her less of a piece of scheisse. Films that deal with questions of moral turpitude sure are a lot of fun.

Overall it's a very basic screenplay with threadbare dialogue even, which is somewhat typical of most TV movies these days. Louis Mandylor as the jealous ex-lover, in large part, completely sells the movie as a concept, the main standout scene being his confrontation with the mother's husband. What this film really has going for it though, is the very atypical realism of the whole underlying "stalker" situation. As the viewer, you'll likely feel inner conflict over the scenario you've been presented with. It therefore succeeds very well in drawing the viewer in and holding one's interest, for the simple reason that, unlike most stalker movies, it deals with sacrifice and loss in a way that's relatable.

If you've ever been in a relationship where you've given more than you got back, or maybe feel guilty for not reciprocating what you feel you should have or could have, you'll likely be getting JUST a little bit more out of this film, than you would out of, say, the typical thriller/stalker film where the antagonist is either ridiculously in love at first sight, with no real depth of character explored, or thriller/stalker films where the antagonist is seeking revenge for something often half-baked or accidental, in a way that's over the top, and where the ends don't in any way justify the means. That's what I'm personally all too used to seeing with this type of formula, so with this film came a slight refreshing illumination for the genre.

Its a low budget Tv movie, with some flaws in writing. Just typical tv budget performance.

Its a good start , like a young dumb couple breaking someone else big house and crap happens later and dude ends up in prison for 20 years and his girl ends up married n daughter with someone else. Then prison dude become hunky guy and pissed about his lover is married n happy.

And then movie goes stupid till the end. I really hoped that if there would be more logical or less violent strategy to win his lover then it would be great.

During the first half I found myself thinking that 'this isn't too bad for a Lifetime flick' but the second half just wasn't very good and just felt very clichéd but also very cheap, like literally like they had a better script but the company wanted to save on location-costs and stuff so they changed it for that reason.

Louis Mandylor is actually pretty good as the psycho and Ashley Scott looks like a million bucks and is good (up until the final half hour) so it does have that going for it, the rest of the cast aren't terribly impressive though and yeah the script leaves a lot to be desired.

And when I say that a movie from the Lifetime network's script have a lot to be desired, you know this plot have A LOT to be desired.

But it's still far from the worst Lifetime movie out-there and like I said it does have some positives.