Cas de conscience

Hopkins and Danner are great as the opposing spouses. His conversations with himself are fun to watch, as he tries to work out how to kill his wife. Not so much a whodunit, as a who's going to do it, with a wonderful twist at the end. And don't miss a word of the dialogue.

Fans of Anthony Hopkins will delight in this carefully staged teleplay. Fans of Blythe Danner will also be pleased to see a favorite character actress given more screen time than usual.

Although the plot is fairly standard and the events mostly predictable, it comes off much better than say your average Perry Mason or Columbo Movie. Hopkins, as a high-priced, high-power attorney, is delightful as he comically and and viciously destroys his own plans for his wife's murder. The play succeeds in its own ability to recognize its weaknesses. Unlike most television mysteries where the audience is asked to ignore the plot holes and revel in the detective's brilliance at spotting the clue and solving the crime, this play takes pride in pointing out its own holes as it goes along. As an audience participation spectacle, it is fun to play along, spotting the holes before the characters do. Overall, it's a bit static, with the vast majority of the action never leaving the main house, and cynics will find fault or boredom with the events leading up to the conclusion. But fans of the genre, or of Hopkins, will no doubt remain intrigued and find the ending quite satisfying. The whole play comes off much like the great Olivier and Caine character study, "Sleuth" and those who have seen that longish masterpiece know what kind of a compliment that is, and will also appreciate that this is 34 minutes shorter.

Mystery fans can do much worse for an evenings entertainment.

This is a good movie, especially since I am a big Anthony Hopkins buff. I also like Blythe Danner, who plays his loving? wife. It's a fun, quirky and clever mystery with twists and turns. As Anthony Hopkiins makes plans for his future by planning the demise of his wife, he anticipates and participates, in his imagination, how he should perform in Court as he stands trial for murder.

There is a problem, however. I ordered a brand new, factory-sealed VHS by Quality Video and the sound and picture quality were dreadful and unwatchable! I re-ordered it on DVD and it was a little better, but the picture was dull and grainy. It is hard to believe that it is not possible to get a good quality picture and sound for this TV film.

What a shame... It's an interesting and clever movie!

For a TV movie, this is awfully good. Hopkins spends much of the movie playing out scenarios of how his murder trial would play out if he killed his wife, with a portrait of his father playing the judge. He goes through different methods of killing her, and plays out the trial until he finds the mistake in his plan. These one-man scenes are very funny, and Hopkins delivers them expertly, as one would expect.

My edition is "Authored and remastered by DDC Labs - Made in Canada," packaged as a double feature with "Dangerous Relations." There is no other edition information on jacket. The DVD transfer is so bad, it is nearly unwatchable. The low price (USD 2 + tax) is no excuse for a sloppy job. This is very unfortunate because the movie is excellent, as far as murder mysteries go. I give it highest grade for story and acting. I am sure that there were other production values such as photography, sound, and production design, however I cannot evaluate those because of the poor video and audio quality. I would like to know what editions the other reviewers were evaluating.