Murder on Spec

I'm sorry, this movie is very bad.

I just watched this on Lifetime so I should have known better. As much as I love looking at Brooke Burns, this movie is terrible.

Let's start with the screenplay. Horrible. Completely not believable. The whole premise of the story is ridiculous. Could something like this go on? Maybe. But the way the screenplay is written, there's just no way. It's just so outrageous. Actually, it's comical when you watch it. The acting is pretty funny as well.

If you want to laugh at bad writing, bad filming, bad screenplay, watch this movie. It should be shown in all filming 101 classes about what NOT to do in film-making.

There's nothing about this film that is even remotely believable. Grey, overcast skies, oh, I recognize that place, it's Vancouver, Canada - home of the worst movies in the world! And this is yet another piece of garbage from there. Some guy named Harvey Kahn makes these terrible films. Here is an excerpt of something he said during the making of this film

>>In the 1967 classic The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman's title character gets some succinct career advice from a friend's father: "Plastics!" Vancouver-based producer Harvey Kahn, here to shoot Murder on Spec, had a similar experience in the 1970s. "I had a guy come up and put his arm around me and he said, 'Cable!'"<<

Yeah, well that guy that put his arm around Mr. Kahn must have seen some of his earlier work because this garbage ain't gonna ever be seen anywhere BUT cable so he was sure right about that!

This film essentially begins with an attractive woman by the name of "Kate Graham" (Brooke Burns) having marital difficulties with her extremely wealthy husband "Duke Fairbanks" (Barclay Hope) eventually culminating in him asking for a divorce. Although she is devastated by this, she turns down his offer to pay her $1 million as part of a settlement and simply accepts his decision and begins to pack what few belongings she has in their home. Not long afterward, Duke is shot and killed on his yacht and she becomes the prime suspect due to some evidence which contradicts her previous testimony on where she was during the time of the murder. It's at this time that she starts being harassed and threatened by a young man who demands that she pay him several million dollars for killing her husband. The problem is that, according to her, she has never met this man and the longer she refuses to pay him, the more evidence is leaked that incriminates her for the murder of her husband. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that I found this to be an interesting movie due in large part to the uncertainty of whether Kate actually had something to do with the murder or not. That being said, however, I must admit that there were several scenes that lacked realism with her decision to assume a direct involvement in the investigation as perhaps the most glaring of them all. I mean, with all of that money at her disposal, she could have easily hired a private detective to help her out. I also don't understand why she didn't fire her personal attorney (played by Jay Brazeau) either. In any case, while this certainly wasn't a great film by any means, it passed the time fairly well and I have rated it accordingly. Average.

We watched it - it was a passable time-waster built around a very charming leading lady, Brooke Burns (film a.k.a. 'Trophy Wife').

She won't challenge Meryl Streep for acting honors, but this was a low-budget vehicle built around the familiar device of a pretty, but determined, main character under attack by a sinister guy (a hacker, an extortionist, a serial killer, a combo - you choose). She will have to resolve to defeat him herself - there's no 'buddy' waiting to bail her out. In this case, the bad guy extorts money from women who have lost rich, but unpleasant, husbands in 'untimely deaths' - deaths he caused, 'on spec' - that is, on 'speculation' that the women will gladly pay a commission to be rid of the villainous 'ex'. It's not an entirely new idea - Alfred Hitchcock used a similar twist in his old TV mystery show.

The difference here is that the villain claims to be able to implicate poor Brooke in the murder-for-hire. That part is stretchy. Nonetheless, the camera work is nifty (reminding me of a Director using tribute-type camera angles to echo the genre), and the gadgetry makes for interesting - if implausible - entertainment.

It took me a while to realize that the 'killer' had his victims 'over a barrel' - they paid, instead of going to the Police. No wonder they don't want to talk to Brooke when she starts investigating these cases herself: these 'victims' are complicit in a crime. It's an intriguing kind of 'con' - you can't go to the Police with your story, after you pay. hmmmmmmmmmmmm.

While the computer and technical abilities of the perpetrator are strictly sci-fi, we saw a similar device used in a big-budget British mini-series with John Hannah entitled 'Amnesia'. The bad guy's ability to produce phony tech data was essential to moving the plot forward, and building the suspense to a surprising climax. The device isn't as well orchestrated in 'Trophy Wife', but it serves the same purpose: it keeps our hero fighting to get her story believed.

Finally: life has a way of imitating art.. as silly as the plot might seem, there are fraud, and murder-for-profit cases in the true-life crime annals that seem stranger than anything we've read in fiction.

So, I gave the film a 7 - for the 'heroine-battles-super-bad-guy-B-movie-suspense' genre.

I think that the negative reviews are very accurate and the others are watching a different movie than I am. I'm 38 minutes into it and can't believe the lack of investigation abilities that the "police" in this one have. I don't think they could catch a cold much less a criminal. Why is the person that admitted to the murder able to move about like a ghost and nobody seems to notice him? Why is the Kate Graham character doing her own investigation while the DA (dumb a**) police can follow her but no one else. I hope I make it to the end.

the review does not contain enough lines so: I think that the negative reviews are very accurate and the others are watching a different movie than I am. I'm 38 minutes into it and can't believe the lack of investigation abilities that the "police" in this one have. I don't think they could catch a cold much less a criminal. Why is the person that admitted to the murder able to move about like a ghost and nobody seems to notice him? Why is the Kate Graham character doing her own investigation while the DA (dumb a**) police can follow her but no one else. I hope I make it to the end.