Judgment Day: The John List Story

Judgment Day: The John List Story is another well done made for tv movie.

It's the true story about a man that was driven over the edge, and decides to kill his whole family (wife,3 kids, & his own mother). He planned it out & had a 2-week head start to get away. Robert Blake,s performance as John List was amazing. "John List" escaped from being captured for almost 20yrs. It took a profile on America,s Most Wanted to finally bring him to justice.

This movie may be disturbing to some viewers. But it's a story that had to be told. And it was done really well.

I love Robert Blake. He is a perennial favorite(up to this point, of course). He is versatile, dynamic, and compelling. However, I think he was miscast in this role. Part of the problem is that nothing about him resembles John List. Although in a lot of scenarios, it is easy to look past the physical resemblance to characters, I found it very difficult to accept his portrayal of John List.

Insofar as the overall acting, it was marginal. Caruso was boring, and not particularly enthralling. D'Angelo was excellent as List's wife. The other tertiary characters added breadth to the film.

All in all, not a bad piece. It is watchable when you are flipping through cable looking for something other than reruns of Home Improvement.

Based on true events this is a disjointed and at times confusing story of John List a conservative member of the Lutheran Church, an accountant by trade, a poor husband and father especially as he lacked the social skills to deal with his colleagues at work and could not deal with his children as they grew older.

Unable to hold down a job or get promotion and deep in debt he killed his family including his supposedly overbearing mother and was in hiding for about 20 years in which time he got a new identity and married again.

According to the film List was helped to secure his escape because of the length of time it took for the victims bodies to be discovered and the ineffectual role of the law enforcement agencies. It was only the actions of one determined cop and the help of a television show that brought List to justice.

The film starts after List has killed his wife, children and mother. We see blood, we him eating his dinner and cleaning up before he leaves the property. We get flashbacks of him as a child being taught life lessons by his mother.

Living in Britain, I had no idea about this true life story and when the murders took place. Therefore I was left confused as to the time setting of the murders. It could had been anywhere in the 1950s to the 1980s going buy the cars and the art direction. It would had helped if the film gave the viewer a date setting even though the filmmakers took creative licence with the story.

The film is pieced together by the investigating officer talking to various family members, fellow workers and a priest leading to flashbacks leading up to the murders. These flashbacks continue throughout the film as we see List leading his new life and in a sense repeating the mistakes he made with his first family.

The problem is that apart from Robert Blake, no one gets a chance to make an impression with their characters. David Caruso is wasted in almost what is a cameo.

The way Blake portrays List, he is almost a loony toon about to go off like a firecracker at any minute. His List is a man out of sync with the world. There is nothing unusual about that, I know many religious people where religion is in effect a comfort blanket in a world that they do not understand.

We are told in the movie that the reason he was unable to hold a job was he lacked the skill set to get along with people. He was passed over for promotion, in social settings with families of co-workers he was embarrassed by his wife who caused scenes including making allegations that he was a wife beater. Blake's characterisation was so frightening you are shocked that he managed to woo a woman and get married a second time.

The film has that 1990s cable television movie sheen, its rather badly made and wastes some good actors and an interesting story. Although made in 1993, the version of the film I saw was updated to include new captions that informs you that List died in 2008 and was buried next to his mother.

IMO, the John List story is a fascinating and exciting one, and unfortunately, this movie does not really do it justice. Having read some of the available books about the life of John List and the resulting crimes, I found the movie somewhat disappointing, and I had been looking forward to seeing it. I am surprised there hasn't been more written about John List, since it is a more interesting and remarkable story than many others which have received far more attention. The actor playing John List is a good actor, but I do not believe this was the right part for him, especially having seen photos of the real List and having read the books. He isn't as convincing as he should have been. The role of the mother wasn't convincing either, as I felt there were some inconsistencies between the real person described in the books and the character as shown in the film. It was a satisfactory movie, but having enjoyed the books with their far greater detail, and finding them very interesting, the movie was sort of a disappointment... I'd like to see another try at this story, with a little more attention to detail and character development, because you lose a lot without understanding the background of the story better.

... Because he is third billed, is hardly on screen versus everybody else, and he spends most of the time he is on camera mutely over emoting. This premiered in February 1993, so this was before he was a shooting star on NYPD Blue the following year.

This was Robert Blake's first acting job in eight years, and he does a serviceable job playing this film's version of John List. I'm not sure List was this powder keg always about to explode that he is portrayed here, but then the guy was such a loner all his life there probably is not much in the way of insight in existence unless it is coming from police psychiatrists after List's arrest. If you don't know, List is infamous for having bought a mansion, then lost his job as a bank executive when he could not relate to people, pretended to his family that he still had that job, embezzled from his mother to meet his bills, and then when the money ran out killed his elderly mother, his wife, and his three children and was a fugitive from justice for 17 years before being caught in 1989.

The film follows List after he murders his family and disappears, but pretty much shows the same pattern in his new life that he had in his old one - He finds a church, gets married to a woman who is looking for security who is ultimately disappointed in his ability to provide, buys a house he cannot afford, and is frustrated by his lack of success in the workplace.

It gets one key thing wrong - When List was arrested he initially denied that he was John List. Also the great irony of List killing his family at least in part because of the financial burden of the mansion he bought in New Jersey is not mentioned. That irony was that after the house burned down in 1972 it was discovered that the stained glass sky light over the ballroom was Tiffany glass and worth an estimated hundred thousand dollars at the time. That would have solved List's financial problems.

This is a very mediocre and lazy effort at telling one of the great true crime stories of the twentieth century, and I found it disappointing overall.