Un engrenage fatal

I have watched this movie every time it has been on TV. I find it very heartbreaking that this is more common than we realize. As adults we have the choice to stay or leave a situation, a child does not have that same option. This story is based on my husbands sister. The movie is very accurate in it's portrayal of the abuse she and her children endured. Several things were omitted in the movie, but I am not sure where they got their information. This family suffers from the loss of a sister and mother that our judicial system could not save. Hopefully this movie will open eyes and help those that suffer to find the courage and strength to escape a bad situation.

I too seen the movie and really liked it. I always try and look up any information on a true movie as in trying to find the real names the location, the trial etc....Here is what I have found so far. I hope this helps.

David was found guilty of first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder and first-degree assault in the 1987 shootings. He faces at least 40 years in prison before parole, and prosecutors have said they will seek the death penalty. David Guenther -- 6-foot-5, 260-pounds -- beat Pamela regularly for 15 years. Her close friends knew it. But she stayed with her husband, who was unemployed and apparently universally disliked. When she finally left David, Pamela took her two children and secretly moved in with her boss -- who later became her lover. David -- who in 1986 killed a neighbor woman and wounded her husband in a bloody quarrel on the doorstep of the Guenther home in a Denver suburb -- tried to kidnap Pamela in a doughnut shop parking lot and threatened her life repeatedly.

After she got a restraining order forcing him to leave their home so she could move back in, he forced his way into the house and held her hostage at gunpoint for four hours before surrendering to local police.

Yet, eight hours after David was arrested, he was out on $10,000 bail, charged only with burglarizing his own home -- a fact that outraged Pamela's friends and neighbors. He began stalking Pamela, who hid from him in a shelter for battered women and insisted upon -- and got -- police escorts to her supermarket job. A week after the hostage episode, David jumped out of his car in a parking lot and shot Pamela to death in front of their children. He is serving a life sentence for first-degree murder.

Presumably, as Executive Producer, Michele Lee has strong feelings about the subject of this made-for-TV movie on domestic abuse, which highlights a "make-my-day" self-preservation statute and the police review of domestic violence protocol. It's just a pity that she cast herself in the main role. Based on the true story of Gary and Jessica Cochran from Glen Oaks, this is the tale of a husband as abuser and wife (and her children) as victim.

The teleplay by Cindy Myers doesn't provide much backstory. The treatment begins with the Cochran's moving into a new house, after we are told 15 years of marriage. Gary (James Farentino) is long-term unemployed, and Jessica (Lee) works at 2 part time jobs, at a bakery and diner. At one point Gary says that he won't go back to jail, though we aren't told why he was there before or for how long. Gary's past seems to be of some importance for our understanding of him. All we get is his talk of feeling empty and alone as a child, and that being with Jessica makes him "one person", and that he beats her because they become "too close".

Myer thankfully shows an escalation of Gary's anger, so that he is not presented as unreasonable from the start (I had no problems with his dislike of smoking and alcohol, for example), but the issue of his make-my-day killing of a neighbour is a plot point that is left unresolved, and he does not bother to defend himself when Jessica applies for a restraining order. Jessica is provided with an employer Walter (John Spencer) as an alternate romantic interest, and a co-worker Lee (Lee Garlington) who leads her to a "underground" women's shelter, though Myers saves her trump card for the end. Two interesting touches are a scene where Gary tries to teach his son Peter (Damion Stevens) how to fight, and Jessica's redemptive sexual attraction to Gary, whereby his "anger" transforms into lovemaking skill.

Myers has Gary and Jessica give to-camera confessionals, where they both use the expression "anyways", and cliches like "walking on razorblades", "You made your bed, now you have to sleep in it", and Jessica considering herself a "hostage". We get the standard "If you hit me again, I'll leave you. If you leave me, I'll kill you" rhetoric of the genre, but also one funny line. When Jessica is asked how dangerous Gary is on a scale from 1 to 10, 10 being lethal, she replies 11.

Director Armand Mastroianni plays with the confessionals, cutting from Gary's "There was nothing I could do" and "Stop it" to the same lines from Jessica, and we only get visual cliches like slow motion for a shooting in the climax. Mastroianni also dissolves from a smiley face drawing by Peter to a close-up of Gary, and has Jessica look beyond a over-the-shoulder reaction shot to watch Gary when she is being police interviewed. However a swat team that arrives in the face of Gary's violation of the restraining order is ludicrous. Mastroianni repeatedly uses invasive close-ups of Gary to make him look monstrous, however does the same for a kiss between Jessica and Walter to also show its awkwardness.

In spite of the treatment's bias, Farentino (who was married to Lee at the time of filming!) makes Gary more pitiable than Jessica. Lee tends to pull faces, though she does provide some animal noises of fear when she goes to bed with Gary against her will.

I saw the movie last night and I cried. I work in a woman's transitional shelter and fortunately see the brighter side of survivors of domestic violence and not the fatal victims of it. Of the many stories I've heard from the women and children I would have to say that this is one of the movies that comes to be depicted so well that the women I work with can see it and be thankful they did not end up in a morgue like Jessica Cochran. If anyone out there reads this and you are going through a similar situation, please don't hesitate to call a hotline for domestic violence. A grave is far more worse than a shelter to end up at. There are many programs like the one where I work at that empower women to be SURVIVORS, NOT CONTINUE AS VICTIMS. Take that one step and know that there is help out there and you don't have to end up DEAD>

is very believable in her role as Jessica Cochran, a woman with two children, whose husband Gary has problems with anger, which gradually escalate.

This is a true story based on what occurred in Glen Oaks, and Gary Cochran (named the "make my day shooter"), who shot a neighbor during a dispute, was apparently let off the charges due to his wife's testimony. Another review mentioned character development, but really, we do learn a bit about Jessica, that she has to work at a dead end waitress job to make ends meet. Gary Cochran apparently had some problems with employment, and we don't really see what has transpired.

We do see his rage, and Farentino is chillingly believable. The scenes where he teaches his young son to defend himself are quite upsetting.

John Spencer has a brief role as Jessica (Lee's) employer. Lee Garlington as her sympathetic friend, and Cicely Tyson, as a shelter coordinator for women who are victims. The film is primarily watchable for Ms. Lee's sympathetic performance, a woman who felt she had no options. She does not come off as the usual helpless femme fa tale that women victims are often portrayed as. Farentino also has some dark moments, and was well cast in this film. 8/10.