Mortelle protection

Standard B-movie fare. But strangely watchable. Caroline Goodall is kinda babe-like.....and the plot has a decent enough twist. Gotta wonder, is Goodall the sister of Jane Goodall of chimpanzee research fame? Looks similar. But her sister picked chimps better than Caroline picks men. 5/10. Just barely worth renting on video if you have seen everything else.

Annie (Caroline Goodall)is a battered wife. "In the end," she says in a voice-over at the beginning of the movie, "(my story) is just a little fairy tale about feeling desperate."

Annie is married to a Bill (Jon Gries), a cop and wife-beating control freak who won't let Annie get a job or a divorce. She has tried to run away, but he always catches her. And she knows that eventually he'll kill her.

He likes to remind her that he saved her from her sexually abusive father. As he slams her head to the floor, he screams something about "that freak called 'Daddy,' that sick old f--- !"

So, the idea of murdering Bill sounds pretty good to Annie.

Meanwhile, Bill's partner, Clark (Michael Beach), a good-hearted man, tries to help her. But he can offer her only the standard legal remedies that don't necessarily guarantee her safety.

Bill allows her to take a cooking class; she loves it, and it's a way to get out of the house. One evening the instructor introduces a new student, Tommy (Mark Harmon), to the class, and immediately he and Annie strike up a friendship.

She asks what he does for a living. "I kill people," he says -- and laughs, after a long pause. Uh, just joking...

Eventually she tells him about her predicament. He listens sympathetically, then mentions another solution, one that is more conclusive than anything Clark can offer.

She agrees to it, her problem is solved -- and then she finds out, to her horror, that when it comes to possessiveness, her husband was an amateur compared to Tommy.

I'm always wishing for better-than-average straight-to-video movies. And I got what I wished for with this film. Great acting (Goodall, Harmon, and Beach are simply perfect in their roles) and a script with frequent flashes of irony and wit make this a very entertaining and satisfying movie indeed.

This wasn't great art, but I liked it.

This is a good movie. I originally watched this on my Ipad in bed hoping it would put me to sleep. I kept thinking I would shut it down at some point but realized I had to see the end. Basically, you have a hard working cop married to a so so looking wife. This man just needs a decent meal, but his wife has zero cooking skills. He sends her to cooking class and she still can't serve a meal a man can eat. Some would say he over reacts, but this guy fells the need for a "beat down" to get his point across. The man just wants a "side dish" for god sakes! Anyway, I must say that this chick gets a little better looking as the movie goes on, I'm not sure why and it was a little distracting. So she meets this cute guy at cooking class and her husband smells something dirty going on ..but this guy she meets could grant her the freedom she's been looking for.

Standard B-movie fare. But strangely watchable. Caroline Goodall is kinda babe-like.....and the plot has a decent enough twist. Gotta wonder, is Goodall the sister of Jane Goodall of chimpanzee research fame? Looks similar. But her sister picked chimps better than Caroline picks men. 5/10. Just barely worth renting on video if you have seen everything else.

I like the settings and the characters. Its quite the complex part writing a thriller to give it a good "picture". But I can't take if they start punching loopholes into the story to accommodate the writing; I can't stand characters that seem to be three dimensional beings starting to act strangely to "fit" into schematic story development. But when you start to lower the expectations and give "into the flow", the result is quite entertaining. Harmon and the other cast deliver good performances for the "setting" and I have to admit, that the the showdown teared me more than I hoped. If you catch it on TV in the night and like to watch some easy schematic thrill with a little end surprise, you won't be disappointed - I have seen *much* worser. But I wouldn't take this out of a DVD-rental store... 5-6 Stars.