Amber: Témoin à charge

I caught this movie on Sky Premiere this week and it filled 80 minutes. Being from the UK, I had no baggage coming to this film. I understand that the case received saturation coverage in the US, featuring as it does the essential ingredients of murder, sex and betrayal. I didn't realise that the screenplay was adapted from a book by Amber Frey, which clearly put the balance in her favour. During the movie, she came across as a person of integrity and high morals. What a surprise then, when I searched her on Google after watching the movie, to discover that she had written the required book, appeared on numerous chat shows, sold the film rights, etc.

Ah well, I suppose you can't blame someone for making a buck or two.

The film itself is serviceable but bland as you would expect of a TV movie. The central roles are all played by actors who bear a startling resemblance to their real-life counterparts. None more so than the actress Janel Moloney playing the role of Amber Frey. I am not familiar with Moloney's work in the West Wing but I assume her soporific turn here was a reflection of the real-life nature of Frey. If it's not - then, please excuse me, but this was a performance that ran the gamut of emotions from A to B. Considering the situation she found herself in I am surprised she remained so calm and composed - almost icy.

As usual in TV movies, there are huge leaps in the narrative and the audience is expected to fill in the holes. For example, one minute she is alone in the world after the revelations about her ex-boyfriend, the next, she is in bed with a massage colleague and has been made pregnant by him.

Finally, the courtroom scenes built up no tension whatsoever. They seemed tacked on almost as an afterthought.

All in all, it passed the 80 minutes, but if it had been a moment longer, it would have been too long.

There is probably a decent film to be made of this case - this ain't it.

A very well done, made for TV movie, I thought, detailing the complicated relationship between Amber Frey and Scott Peterson, convicted of murdering his wife Lacy and unborn son. I first want to give credit to the lead actors here - Janel Moloney as Amber, and Nathan Anderson as Scott. To me, both of them absolutely nailed these parts, and created a completely believable recreation of the relationship. Moloney was especially convincing, particularly after the truth about first Scott's marriage, and then the death of his wife comes out. Her confusion, uncertainty, anger, hurt and fear all seemed very real. Scott's charisma, and his ability to sweep Amber off her feet while developing a completely convincing alternative lifestyle and apparently being able to maintain the pretense of loving husband and father to be (even Lacy's parents didn't even suspect that he could have had anything to do with her death) create a chilling portrait of a sociopath.

The movie opens with Amber on the witness stand (thus the title; I admit that I was a bit put off at first that the producers chose for what I expected to be a tabloid-style TV melodrama a title that is best known as a classic British film from the 1940's, but the title does fit once the context is known), and the impression is that the story is a visual recreation of her testimony at Scott's trial. In that context, it's worth mentioning another impressive performance - that of John Rubinstein as Scott's attorney Mark Geragos. It's perhaps limited in some respects by its made for TV status, but in all honesty I don't know that there was enough in the Amber-Scott relationship to carry a full length feature film. This was just enough to be satisfying. 8/10

I remember when the story first broke, right at Christmas. My daughter said she had met this couple at a party in their condo about 8mo previous. They were known to be this enviable couple. But my daughter felt his eyes wandering. And he was full of charisma. When this news broke we totally did not believe Scott to have any wrong doing. Then the bombshell. How brave that was of Amber Frye to step up and to do the tapes. Without the tapes no one would take her story over the flamboyant Scott's. What a terrible, terrible thing. And this kind of stuff happens all too often. I guess we should not even watch these "base on a true story" movies. Lacy surely found out about the girl-friend and that's where things got out of hand. But of course, this sleaze bag of a husband didn't want reveal what rally happened. Again, it's a good thing there was an Amber Frye. And I don't care if she made money from her book; her life was turned upside down too. And poor Lacie. It pains me to see people commenting so much about the quality of the movie or actors. For Christ's sake!!! This girl was thrown into the ocean with her baby yet to be born. Her parents have to live with these horrific images of their daughter's armless and headless body recovered. How does the man still breathe. My daughter said Lacie had a very bubbly personality.

I just finished watching this movie and was amazed on how Amber's story was portrayed. I myself followed the story along by reading tabloid magazines and this movie helped me see all the pain and suffering Amber went through. It portrayed the truth with amazing precision. Janel Moloney played the beautiful blonde Amber Frey so you could understand every single thing about Amber Frey during the time this all happened. All of the actors were great. I look forward to seeing them in the future. "Amber Frey: Witness for the Prosecution" is a power-house, compelling drama. Even the fake tabloids they had were so realistic. I loved this movie and can't wait to see it again. It really makes you think.

The made-for-TV film is very faithful in retelling of the story of what happened back in 2002-2005 in the murders of Laci Peterson and her unborn son Connor and the trial that followed of her husband Scott.

It turned out that Scott was cheating on Laci as far back as a month before she disappeared the day before Christmas 2002. Having a relationship with physical therapist Amber Frey Scott bragged to Amber that he's a very successful fertilizer salesman. Scott boastfully tells Amber that he spreads the stuff, horse manure, all over the world in order to impress the single mother. What in fact Scott was spreading was a whole line of BS. In real life Scott was a part-time waiter and collage student with a wife and soon to be born child whom he could barley support with his meager income.

Thinking that Scott was single Amber is shocked to find out from her girlfriend Carol, who introduced Scott to her, that he in fact is married. Scott knowing just what buttons to push get's Amber back on track, and on his side, tearfully telling her that his poor wife in fact died, he doesn't say how, about a year ago. This BS story on Scott's part falls completely apart when Amber, who never watches the TV News, accidentally happens to see Scott on TV when he was supposed to be traveling all throughout Europe selling his brand of high quality horse manure. Scott is seem by the hurt and surprised Amber begging the public to help him in finding his wife Laci who mysteriously disappeared during the Christmas holidays!

You would think that by now Amber, who's very sensitive in being lied to, would have dropped that lying bum Scott Peterson, and never had anything to do with him again, instead she gets even more involved with him. That's when the local Modesto Police have Amber try to trap Scott, by recording his cell-phone calls to her, in having him admit that he, now the prime suspect, was the person who did both Laci and the unborn Connor in. Laci together with Connors bodies were found in the waters outside the Berkeley Marina on April 13/14, 2003.

You have to tell yourself that this Scott Peterson is either the stupidest or the most clever killer in the history of crime. The guy keeps calling Amber over and over up to and even after his trial for murder began knowing, how could he have not, that she's recording both his and her conversations!

Never in any of the dozens of calls he makes to Amber does Scott as much admit that he murdered his pregnant wife Laci. I feel that Scott knowing that his calls are being recorded wanted to put off the cops in thinking that he was guilty of the crime. Why else would he do something so ridicules unless he wanted everyone, the cops listening in as well as Amber and later the media, to think that he's just a poor innocent schmuck who has nothing to hide in his wife's murderer?

Amber for her part gets support from Laci's mom Sharon Rocha and step-dad Ron Grantsky who saw, after struggling with their consciences, what a low life creep their son-in-law Scott really is. It's the support of Laci's family, far more then the hot to get Scott Peterson police, that in the end gave Amber the strength and courage that he needed to get on the witness stand. It's there that Amber looked her ex-lover straight in the eye telling Scott, and a packed courtroom, what exactly she thought of him and it wasn't pretty.

We'll never really know for sure what was the reason, now that he's been convicted of it in a court of law, why Scott Peterson murdered his wife. Scott always maintained his innocence all throughout the trial and even after his conviction. The evidence that sent Scott Peterson on a one way trip to San Quentin's death row was circumstantial at best with him never as much as admitting or even hinting that he murdered his pregnant wife Laci. It was Scott's former lover Amber Frey's testimony more then the not so incriminating police undercover audio tapes that convinced the jury to convict him.

Amber's brave decision to face the public in her involvement with Scott, that at one point had her suspected in being his accomplice in Laci's murder, that in the end put him behind bars. Amber's court testimony also showed how she did it not just out of a sense of justice, in Scott murdering his wife, but betrayal as well. The betrayal of Amber and her feelings for Scott in what the scheming heel did to her. In Scott using Amber as an alibi and human shield in his failed efforts to escape ultimate justice.