STALKING LAURA, a true story about one man's increasing obsession with a work colleague which leads to eventual tragedy, is an astonishingly good film and quite possibly one of my favourite made-for-TV movies of all time. On the face of it, it looks like every other TV-movie ever made: matter of fact, routine, bogged down with the 'true story' hook. Indeed, for the first half of the production, all is familiar and safe, rather than gripping.
The film is anchored by Richard Thomas delivering a completely surprising turn as the villain of the piece. Thomas underplays it, selling us his nice-guy John Boy Walton character with a few hidden undertones; a little too insistent here, a gaze lingering too long here. Shields is perfectly adequate as the increasingly frustrated object of his obsession, but the film belongs to Thomas.
Then he flips and the film becomes something else: gripping, gutsy, compelling, harrowing and completely shocking. I wasn't expecting what happened next, but from that point in I was glued to the screen. Few films have the guts to tackle such disturbing – and, indeed, increasingly familiar, at least in the news – subject matter, but this movie handles it with aplomb. Kudos then, to both scriptwriter and director for making an unforgettable movie.
