Dangereuse rencontre

This movie had a surprising end! But I loved it anyways! A nice movie to relax with...especially when my fav. actor Pierce Brosnan is in it!!

During an acrimonious divorce and custody battle, Jane Bonner meets and marries Patrick Brody (Pierce Brosnan). When Eric, Jane's son, goes missing, suspicion immediately falls on her alcoholic cop ex-husband who has been stalking the couple. But Jane uncovers a secret that every mother dreads.

Pierce Brosnan puts in an excellent performance, transitioning from charming to ruthless with ease as the plot unravels. It's a neat thriller which fools you into thinking it's a typical "husband stalks son and wife" but it smoothly twists into something else. There are some dull bits but that's kept to the minimum and it's quite tense at times with some clever misdirection.

It's interesting to see what shape Pierce Brosnan's career was in before Bond arrived on the scene. In this "tense" thriller, Pierce Brosnan plays the gentle Patrick, who works leading ghetto kids on "confidence courses". He romances a woman, who has a bog-standard mop-top mid-90s kid called Eric. The woman's drunken ex-husband soon arrives on the scene and begins to mess with Pierce.

At one stage Pierce is innocently making "vegeburgers". The husband enters. Pierce resumes making vegeburgers. The husband then assaults Pierce. Little chunks of half-eaten vegeburger call fall from Pierce's mouth. The fight abruptly ends without showing the outcome. This is as good as the film gets.

This was decent film, not worth getting totally excited about, but still very much recommend. The problem is that if you haven't seen this film by now, you probably won't unless someone puts it out on DVD. It's been over 10 years since I saw this, and the photography was good enough to make want to see this again, this time on a widescreen DVD format.

For a film that isn't well-known and stars an unknown actress (along with the known Pierce Brosnan), this was a well-acted, nicely-filmed movie. It movies well and has some nice twists to it, guaranteed to keep the first-time viewer interested. It will keep you guessing.

Terry O'Quinn played the best role in here, in my opinion. Reed did a nice job of acting but I didn't care for her persona. Kudos to Richard Leiterman for his photography.

What I didn't understand was the movie's "R" rating. There was very little profanity in here, very little blood and no nudity. What gives? It did read "R" on my VHS tape.

You will be surprised by Pierce Brosnan in this film a number of times, but the other actors are also excellent, Shanna Reed as the mother and Terry O'Quinn as the drinking father. It's a complicated family drama, beginning with divorce procedures in which the mother (Shanna Reed) gets all the custody of the boy, which the father (Terry O'Quinn) refuses to accept, which is why he from the beginning appears as the villain of the play. However, as matters develop, you learn that he is a policeman, and his objections against Shanna Reed's new husband (Pierce Brosnan) should be quite normal for a natural father, but he is not. Things really get complicated when the boy is kidnapped, and no one can understand by whom or why, since there is no demand for any ransom. Finally things get really heated when the kidnappers are located with a resulting shootout, but both Brosnan and O'Quinn also carry guns. Meanwhile the whole mess of the family business lying behind it all is gradually sorted out, and there are some final settlements. It's a great thriller, great acting performances, a very well written script revealing only morsels at a time, so there is no chance for any naps of boredom. You will stick to it till the end even if the final solution will occur afterwards.