Vítima de uma Farsa

I watched this movie on cable once, and I got hooked. The story was cool, and there were a lot of unexpected twists. I highly recommend checking it out.

Please note however: I am NOT a Richard Grieco fan. I believe his acting is boring, and that he was really meant for adult films.

Julianne Phillips plays the daughter of a wealthy media tycoon who loses her husband in the opening minutes of the film. Grieco plays Eric who meets her while photographing for New Woman magazine. Such is the chemistry between the two that they quickly marry. On a remote honeymoon, Eric sends fake ransom notes to Rachel's father claiming the newly weds have been kidnapped. Meanwhile Rachel begins to suspect that her husband may not be all that he claims.

From the opening credit sequence you know you're watching a soap opera style TV movie and you pretty much prepare yourself to be under whelmed. The musical score all the way through is lame - either one type of romantic music or one type of dramatic music - neither very good.

The plot is poor apart from the moment that the kidnap plot is put in motion. It is actually quite clever if you don't know it's coming and makes you go "oh! that's quite clever!" - partly because I didn't expect any of it to be clever. But after that 5 minute section (early in the film) the rest is either predictable (the final "twists" are sooooo obvious) or just plain insulting to the audience. For example - Phillips is being closely chased through woods by Grieco, stumbles into a house and has plenty of time to fashion weapons out of household items before continuing the escape. Or how about - the investigator just has to ask people in shops for personal information like addresses, phone numbers etc of customers without showing ID or explaining why - and they just give it all over! Or how about the fact that Andy the computer guy seems to be able to access every system known to man through his home PC and at a touch of a few buttons! I won't go on but suffice to say it's not well plotted. In fact the script is poor itself, most lines are unconvincing, interactions between these new lovers are clunky and don't make you believe they even like each other!

However this may be mostly due to Grieco's rubbish evil villain style acting. He really spoils every line he says. In the beginning when playing the boyfriend/romantic role his deliver of dialogue is terrible. On their first date when Phillips asks what he would have done tonight if she hadn't called him he replies "I'd have found you. Believe me, I would have found you". Then at the end of the date says "I'm not going to ask you in, it's not because I don't want to, but because I do". PLEASE! on their first date having just met on the street! The lines are cheesy enough but Grieco delivers them like a big slime and sounds more like a stalker than a romantic - but yet the audience are meant to believe that Phillips just falls head-over-heals with this.

Once Grieco starts becoming suspicious we know it because he starts to do "evil-stares" into the distance as the dramatic music plays or he moves his eyebrows in a camp villain style way. The guy has no idea of subtlety or conveying his character gradually. This is soap opera acting at it's very worst. Julianne Phillips is actually quite good. Not great because nobody could do anything with this material, but she is quite convincing with the emotions she has to betray. Her only bad scenes are with her father, but again that's because the father's part is so badly written.

The end of the film can't come soon enough. Any interest, tension or excitement ends just after the kidnap plot is revealed (15 minutes in!) and then after that you can pretty much guess the next hour or so no problem.

I know TV movies aren't going to be as good dramas as bigger budget movies or big series but this is so dull and lifeless that it should aspire to be average. The only people who watch this should be acting students who want to learn from Grieco how NOT to act.

This movie has been on my Hard-to-Find list ever since I began collecting. Anybody else out there searching for it, guess you could just as well give up boy. It is 'only a TV movie' and the general consensus when researching it, is that it wasn't really liked. Richard Grieco overplayed his part. Bottom line is that I would just absolutely love to see it again, but no DVD release, no trailer on the Net, not even a snippet. It also didn't even have a Wikipedia entry. So, two days ago, this fool attempted to create one for that rather strait-laced institution, armed only with (1) my faded memories (it's been about 20 years!), (2) a little bit of initial research on IMDb, and (3) my fanatic endurance.

I created the page, but it was sketchy as hell. I was also doing the same for two other 'pet projects', raising them up as little children, admittedly they were in basic embryonic stage. Wikipedia protocol demands a very strict approach, and 'this crazy IMDb bird' was sending out help-me notices to get to know the tricks of building the framework of the entry (I don't have the terminology for this; I have since found at that there is Wikipedia terminology for everything, but the average other IMDb birds submitting their jaded little reviews would be generally perplexed by the host of knowledge needed. I was terrorized and remain traumatized!) but to cut a long story short, Wikipedia didn't like my attempts and official notifications were received that they planned to delete them. Some knowledge was gained by myself, at that stage I already knew how to create links on Wikipedia, but thanks to my SOS's, I now know how to create those sub- columns with the larger lettering CAST, PLOT, RECEPTION, EXTERNAL LINKS, but okay... Getting back to the subject, an expert took over, one MichaelQSchmidt, and salvaged my attempts, generally keeping my efforts intact, just made it fit in properly by adding the necessary structures, and generally adding the little wee bits of technical info and external links.

So, I galvanized mighty Wikipedia into creating an entry for this forgotten movie. If not quite forgotten, then sadly neglected.

However, the two others that Mr. MichaelQ also picked up on, since got deleted by the administrators for still being too weak. A VOW TO KILL's entry is surviving hanging by a thread, mostly because it has been slightly fleshed out by the external links (Wikipedia is very, very big on links, it is the first thing a newbie editor has to realize, and I at least kicked off playing it exactly that way) but Mr. MichaelQ has made what I am 99,999% sure is a mistake. In the plot, he mentions that Larissa Laskin plays L.J. Berman, an unscrupulous conMAN... ??????? What the hey?

It's two decades later, I cannot remember the finer details of the story. No synopsis on IMDb and no way for me to see this movie, not ever, I know. But I'm pretty sure the guy missed the potty there.

My other big problem is that this review is to be posted in a forgotten corner of IMDb seen only by the one checking up on it now to see if it suitably fits in with IMDb criteria. I would love to shout out for help regarding clarification of the storyline, the existing ones on IMDb are only about the basic setup.

Okay, long-winded story. Movie itself: If you are as fortunate as to be here checking up to see if this title is worth watching on your Golden Oldies TV Channel (hey, it's only 20 years old!), rest assured that two decades later, some fool boy was still on about it, so, hell, there has got to be something to it. Oh, and Julianne Phillips made a pretty lead actress, and, yes, Richard Grieco was creepy.