L'avocat du mal

One has to wonder if Eric Roberts is appearing in dreck like this just to pay the rent -something anyone can be forgiven for- or whether he consciously chooses these vehicles. If it's the latter, he needs to let someone else make these decisions and stop his once-promising career from spiraling ever more downward. The plot is so preposterous as to turn this film into near-parody. Fortunately, the warning signs are manifest early on, and most viewers will mercifully change the channel before wasting much time on this. It's a truism that it's as much work to make a bad movie as a good movie, and there's not much that Hollywood turns out that doesn't have decent technical standards. But none of the crew's efforts can transcend a stinker of a story.

The plot of "Restraining Order" is very straight forward, and in a peculiar way reminds me of any number of B grade westerns. It's easy to tell the good guys from the bad guys. There is a land grab motive being exploited by the mafia, instead of the railroad barons. There are plenty of frame ups, and of course Eric Roberts gets to single handed take the law in his own hands and save the day. The only thing missing is his horse. "Restraining Order" is no better or worse than a lot of other Eric Roberts low budget films. It has plenty of action and should please his fans. ........................................................ - MERK

This is a lawyer/mob flick, and the only name among the main players is Eric Roberts, who is rather sappy. It's like a TV movie, has a pretty good plot, but the acting is not great. Not much suspense, sort of like Random Encounter in quality. Not really worth the rental bucks.

-Bob

RO is one of those movies which entertained much more than I thought it would. A great dramatic situation thriller which pitts hot show defendant Roberts, up against some real scum. When I saw this movie was directed by the same guy who made A Murder Of Crows, which I haven't seen, but have seen the trailer, funnily enough when watching this, I thought a lot about that movie, running much similar lines to this. RO is pacy and engaging, and Roberts is always an actor attention grabber. His life has become a nightmare after witnessing up close and personal, a client/mobster he has just got off, a James Russo looking guy, slay a aging friend, who owes gambling debts. As if to really reiterate to Roberts, a few times, the consequences of turning him in, and really making himself heard, Roberts fights back, and things really become personal. This is a well formulated thriller with good performances. A real slick thriller surprise moment near the end, I much appreciated, RO is wonderful thriller entertainment, which warrants unrestrained viewing.

I started planning to give this absurd film a 4. As it ground on and got steadily sillier and more violent, I downgraded to 3 and ultimately 2. If it had lasted another ten minutes, we would have been into negative territory! The plot is simplistic and absurd, the acting is at best adequate and hey gang... theres a fist fight on and under the Santa Monica pier. (How often has that been done before? Not for two months, you say?) There are any number of impossible howlers. The worst is the lone rural mail box on the lawn in an urban neighbourhood of fancy homes. Nobody else on the street has one. But then we did need an excuse for the innocent wife to go out to the curb so the bad guys could drive by and... Well, you know the plot. It's all about the mob whacking people. And thats what should be done to this movie. Whack it!