Ni vue ni connue

Really odd TV-movie from the Mary Higgins Clark plot factory. Oddball international cast does pretty well (for the most part); I don't know if the use of British, Canadian, German, and American actors was a deliberate sop to the multi-culti crowd or just a random occurrence. Anyway, the mystery is quite suspenseful at times, though some of the "twists and turns" are a bit pat. The overall impact is hindered, however, by Emma Samms's strange performance. She was apparently struggling with her American accent: some of her line readings are a bit off, and she uses an inappropriately breathy voice in some scenes that really saps them of tension. There was no intrinsic reason for her to use an American accent anyway; the character could just as easily have been a Brit. Also inexplicable is the (creepy) attention paid below to the little girl--her role is actually small.

A woman witnesses murder and has to go on the run. Some odd characters and awful music, but entertaining enough. I did wonder if what was up with the brother-in-law and there are some amazing recoveries.

I was very underwhelmed with this film from start to finish. Even the attempts to link the film to the title was just poorly executed.

Lacey gets on your nerves with her idiocy and exposing her loved ones and herself. She lacks in the brains department. As soon as she became a target she exposed her sister and niece to danger by visiting them, later she gave up the location of where she was hiding while under witness protection. Also the motive was never really fully explained. Why was Heather killed, what was the story behind these murders.

This is yet another example of a poorly adapted film from Mary Higgins Clark.

Well, well, more cheezola from Grosso-Jacobson, from their ice pick music, trying to pass off Toronto as New York, and bad casting.

Very quickly, the story concerns a real estate broker, Lacey, (Samms) who witnesses the murder of an accident victim's mother. The mother believes it was no accident, and finds her daughter's diary pages to prove it. She gives those pages to Lacey before she dies. The killer is after Lacey, so she is sent into the witness protection program, where she tries to figure out what happened so that she can come home.

"Pretend You Don't See Her" is particularly funny. First, we have the beautiful Emma Samms, as British as they come, who has a sister with no British accent. Right off you know the attention paid to the casting. I don't know about the Mary Higgins Clark story - I like Mary Higgins Clark's novels. Her stuff is a fast read, but Agatha Christie she ain't. I mean, did she really have her main character, played by Samms, act like a MORON? Lacey is in witness protection and her sister begs, pleads for a hint as to where she is. She won't tell anyone. So Lacey (now pretending to be named Alice) gives her a hint which enables her sister to figure out her location immediately. And true to her promise, she doesn't tell anyone. She doesn't have to. She buys a newspaper from that city and has it sticking out of her purse wherever she goes so that EVERYONE can see it.

If only that had been the only dumb thing, but it wasn't.

I gave it a 5 because I got to hear a bunch of Italian tenor arias - Una furtiva lagrima, Di quella pira, La donna e' mobile, and Celeste Aida - playing in a character's restaurant.

I've certainly seen worse movies but this is definitely in the bottom tier. The principals' performances were neither terrible nor great though in a lesser role, Danielle Bouffard's was certainly "fingernails on the chalkboard" for anyone old enough to have memories of that experience. Others have commented on Samms's accent but that was neither here nor there compared to the bizarre behavior of her character. Chased by a known killer, why would she not give the one police officer she trusted any hint of her whereabouts? When she finally figured out what was going on, why didn't she share this info with the police rather than going for confirmation on her own and risking it dying with her? Obviously, because that's what the script called for in the mistaken belief this would build tension. All it did was cause a headache from palming my already palm flattened forehead at the disbelief in the character's stupidity. If you need some neck exercise, this would be OK to listen to while trimming your pet's toenails. You'd be continually burning off calories, shaking your head in disbelief though you could certainly end up with neck muscles that looked like they had too many steroids given how many times they'd get exercised.