Sombras Do Passado

The movie is straight trash but Melissa George is solid. The most interesting thing is how she manages to act with clowns who were picked off the street.

I had an interest in seeing this movie due to Melissa George who plays Kate Fischer who lost everything due to withholding an interview she did with a serial killer that could have saved a life if she turned it into police right away. Melissa is a decent actress capable solid performances in TV (Alias) and film. She was passable at best here and every actor around her was awful. All of them are a boring, tired cliche or just plain useless in the film. Even worse, Kate's cop friend Lucas was downright terrible. He is horribly incompetent and not believable as a seasoned detective. Second Chances also has characters that do not serve to advance the plot at all. A key example is the professor that does not like Kate Fischer (Melissa George). In addition, once the perpetrators that are after Kate are revealed it was not some big twist or surprise at all. You could see it coming a mile away. The music used to build suspense and advance the story is bad as well, even for TV movie standards. I have watched other made for TV movies and went into this with low expectations and was still very disappointed, hence the low rating.

If I could think of a plus side, Melissa George looked gorgeous here; however, by the end of the movie I was bored and wanted to go to sleep. Skip this film if its on tv. Second Chances is not even one of those "so bad its good" films. Don't even give it one chance.

I just had a good laugh at sddavis63's review about wishing he had a second chance to get the last 1 1/2 hours of his life back after watching this. How true! It's funny how a bad movie has warning signs right from the get go and in this case, it was literally a sign in the form of a highway sign. I won't go into the details about the movie because they really don't matter, it's so poorly made that the details don't even matter.

The bottom line is there's this kid in a Canadian movie that's trying to pretend it's filmed in America, and as he's heading towards Boston, there's a highway sign which reads, Cambridge XXX miles and Boston XXX miles, (I'm surprised they didn't goof up and make the sign in kilometers). But the fatal flaw is you can tell the sign isn't real! The fonts are too small and it just clearly looks fake. It reminded me of when Wylie Coyote would see the Road Runner coming and he'd make a fake sign that said 'detour' and would be waiting at the top of a ravine with a giant bolder.

So that's all you need to know, the sign says it all. From there on in it's 1 and a 1/2 hour downhill boulder into a ravine.

Boston serial killer Max Hersog has been in prison for the last two years. Journalist Kate Fischer (Melissa George) is still villainized for holding back information which could have solved the case earlier. She was not convinced that Max is the September Slayer and a person with that Modus Operandi is hunting again. She is the new ethics professor in a local college and it's causing a scandal. She is still recovering from her divorce and her public battles. Lucas Kelley is the police detective.

This is a murder mystery TV thriller. There are some problems with the production, the writing, and the final section. The production is strictly TV and it struggles to make Montreal locations be Boston. Somebody should be fired for the bad signage work. The writing is problematic. As a mystery, the reveal needs to have more obvious hints. The villains need bigger roles. It doesn't make sense that he kills like the serial killer. Why? This should not be that complicated. It should be formulaic. As for the final section, it makes no sense that the swat team doesn't go into the house first. There are issues with the sequencing of events. Grading on a curve, this fails even as a cable TV movie.

A reporter who made an error of judgement finds it coming back to haunt her a couple of years later.

This is a made for TV movie so you are aware from the time you put it on that it's not going to win many awards. The story is a bit confusing at times and very generic but it is held together by a decent performance from Melissa George as the ex reporter. The rest of the performances are less impressive and this does hamper proceedings at times.

For all it's faults it does at least build up a nice air of mystery but unfortunately the end reveal is a bit disappointing

Whilst this isn't a great film, I did find it somewhat entertaining and it did at least hold my interest. As long as your expectations are low then this is an easy enough watch.