User reviews

The novel and entire series are amazing. This was serviceable, mostly because Harmon, in particular, just doesn't have the edge Lucas Davenport calls for. And I wasn't particularly impressed with the woman cast as Clara either. As a result, this did not live up to the book despite a valiant effort by Chris Geralmo who is talented. Average.

I find myself agreeing with some of the other reviews in that this is a decent enough adaptation of the tenth of John Sandford (John Camp's) novels and as such it attempts to try and interlace a lot of storyline into the video that fans of the books will understand. It is about as good a job of the gritty storyline that you'll be able to find on commercial TV. Sandford writes some excellent, gripping and gruesome stories more suited for cable or the big screen ...which is really where I would enjoy seeing more of his fine work. Harmon did fair but like others I found him wanting. Davenport is a big, tough and mean character that the bad guys are truly afraid of for good reason. An ex hockey player well over 6' with a brooding character that women love. Harmon isn't the right choice although I liked his effort. A much better choice would have been Russell Crowe, Ray Liotta or Nick Nolte. The two lead women did a great job pulling off the roles of Carmen and Clara but for the buxom Marcy a far better choice would have been the beautiful and moody Jennifer Connelly. Granted, my cast would have driven the costs of this up a lot ...probably far more than any made for TV effort. Hey guys, don't knock it. Any Sandford book that makes it to the screen is worth watching. Maybe not as good as they could have been but...

For one, Mark Harmon is too old, too thinning and gray, too scrawny, and too short to credibly pull off Detective Lucas Davenport. He came across as a better-dressed version of Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs. Second, he surrounded himself with some of the lamest acting talent available today. Athena Karkanis was embarrassingly bad as Marcy, even when you looked past the fact that she's too short, too soft-spoken, and not physical enough (inadequately endowed) to fill the role (think WWF's Chyna toned down a notch--that's Marcy). Did Harmon even read the book? Or the series? An unbelievable hack job. I think the Porsche out-acted the cast. Poor Sandford/Camp is now 0-for-2 on screen adaptations of his books. Note to Harmon: If you plan on doing another Davenport book, please hire Sandford as a consultant/screenwriter and LISTEN to him.

After what was a disappointing start, Certain Prey settled into a comfortable watch for the evening. The initial acting was stiff and apart from Mark Harmon and Lola Glaudini, the cast were generally underwhelming. The script improved as the movie progressed and thankfully the plot in which 2 women commit a series of murders was better than expected. The only thing I truly disliked was the narrative by Harmon during the movie which explained too much from the book. It was uneccessarily distracting and quite annoying. All in all I'm glad I tuned in to watch Harmon in something other than NCIS.

Agree with the other reviewers, this was an embarrassing "movie". Bad lines, actors mailing in performances and it felt like a high school play where everyone was just muddling along with no flow and no tension. If I could give it 0 stars I would, but the 1 star is for the laughs I got when listening to the bad lines.

Like a train wreck, I had to watch through the end to see the chain of comical sequences come to an end.

This was a blatant audience grab for the fans of Mark Harmon and NCIS. He looked like he tried to be Gibbs again, but seriously it is tough to overcome a bad script.

I actually enjoyed this movie a fair bit, as a reasonable representation of the book story. I'm about to read the sequel book to Certain Prey book 10, Mortal Prey book 13, so I thought it'd be neat to watch this movie, which I accidentally discovered on google while searching for a physical copy of Certain Prey, which as it happens, is one of my favourite Davenport Novels so far (and Winter Prey).

Harmon didn't 100% fit the image of Davenport, that said. But he did a fair job at the attempt. I am pretty sure Weather Karkinnen was supposed to be the redhead at the beginning? But I dunno? If so, bad representation. But meh.

I loved the actress that played Marcy. She probably didn't have the breasts we get described in the books, but that didn't matter. Loved her personality. Beautiful woman, with oddly perfect white teeth. Loved the scene with her and Carmel Loan in each others face in the office.

I really loved the portrayal of Clara Rinker as well. I thought she fit very well in the role. Loved her dance with Lucas (though I'm pretty sure Lucas danced better in the book? Not that I had a visual, but I thought I recalled him dancing decent).

I think this is about the best you'll get for a TV Movie to be honest. I didn't even plan to watch it. I was just going to skip around and see if it resembled the book and be done (because book movies are usually utter crap). But nope, I oddly enjoyed this. You may not.

From what I remember it seems to follow the book pretty decent. There is a lot of dialogue taken directly from the book. I'd give this a higher rating, but it's still just a TV movie and could have been better in a lot of ways. The car shootout ending could have been better for instance, but was kinda TV cheesy. But that IS how it happened in the book as I recall. So no complaints on accuracy.

One of the most excruciatingly bad pilots in years. As a Sandford fan and a Minneapolis native, I cringed at the treatment the book received in this debacle of abysmal writing, acting, and casting. The lines were wooden and the production smacked of tight soap opera camera work and amateurish audio. This is a rip-off of Jethro Gibbs fans who tuned in in hopes of seeing an equally compelling character in Harmon's Lucas Davenport. What a profound disappointment. I couldn't watch more than 20 minutes of this initial episode and I have no intention of giving the series a second chance. Unless the writers and supporting cast are replaced, this bomb will die well before season two.

I have been a "Prey" fan for years and I always wished they would do a good film adaptation of one of the books. I thought the first one was pretty bad but Mark Harmon made Eriq Lasalle look like Robert DeNiro. I was never a fan of Harmon and I was pretty disappointed when I found out he was playing Davenport. But I gave it a chance and it was actually worse than I thought it could be. Everything was bad. The directing, casting, acting, and who the hell thought voice overs would be a good idea? So disappointed. I have a hard time believing John Sandford signed off on this pile of crap. For the love of God please do not do another one of these. An embarrassment to the books!

It seems many people hated this movie, but it is fairly obvious from the reviews that none of you have read the books. I thought Mark Harmon did an excellent job of portraying Lucas Davenport, and you can tell by his performance that he is a fan of the books. He really captured the world-weariness of Davenport without going over the top with the character's general bad-assery, and I would love to see him return in further "Prey" movies! As for the people who didn't approve of the fact that all of the characters seemed to be sleeping with one another, this movie is an adaptation of the tenth book in the series. There were nine other books spanning several years of plot that led up to the movie's various romantic entanglements. The producers and writers just did a really efficient job of summing up too much information into a believable plot.

First I would like to say, that I kind of like Mark Harmon, I sometimes watch NCIS, which is sort of a no brainer, but he is doing OK. Second, I would like to state that I totally love John Sandfords novels around Lucas Davenport, who is 6,5, dark haired, handsome, a ladiesman. Enter Mark Harmon as Lucas Davenport in this movie - he is what he is, tired, grey, thin, hooded eyed, heaven help us, this no Lucas Davenport at all. I read the book and I liked it. It was a compelling story, interesting and kind of sad concrning Clara Rinker, the hitwoman. But the script they drained out of this great book was dull and boring, and full of suddenly seemed forced situation that made sense in the book but were taken out of content in the movie. And there was this irritation narration, what was this all about, maybe this should create a Marlowe-feeling or something, it was cheap anyway. And this awful score which loud and exorbitant symphonic, what the heck...avoid at any cost. If would have seen first, I would never ever have read any of the books. I highly recommend ALL the books of John Sandford btw.

There was nothing wrong with Mark Harmon's performance. It was just the movie. It really, really sucked. The only thing good about the movie was Mark Harmon. He did a terrific job portraying the character. I never read the books, but after seeing this bad ass through the talent of Mark Harmon, I like him:) But the movie was overly showered with cliché performances. If they ever make a sequel, it better be a big improvement. However, I'm always looking forward to seeing his next movie. Mark Harmon is the only participant of this movie that deserves to rise. All the others really should burn. I can't to see Mark Harmon play another bad ass character.

Painful. One of the worst screenplays ever written. The acting is not much better. The entire film is a caricature, an excruciating attempt at modern film noir that fails from the opening frames.

From the cheesy, Sam Spade-esque voice-overs, to the excessively cliché dialog, to the ridiculous costumes (the deputy police chief wears panty hose over his head while breaking and entering, as does the assassin.)

Once you understand you're watching a terrible movie, you can almost laugh at how awful everything is. Honestly, this should have been a comedy.

Unless you enjoy pain, this is an easy pass.

I came across this pretty much by accident. I don't get the channel that made this TV movie, and as a huge fan of Davenport/Sandford, I eventually went to great lengths to get a copy. By then I had seen the reviews and pictures here and they had lowered my expectations. In fact, I even waited a couple of weeks to view it. I think many of the complaints of this film come from the unmistakable fact that a TV movie will never be better than a Sandford novel, and even more so for an audience that enjoys reading.

I also think this is one of the real strengths of this film. Mark Harmon and company didn't try to give us our vision of Davenport, he gave us his. All of the characters in the film represent an image that is similar to the book series, but also unique, and the villains are exceptionally well played. In the end, it works well and stands on its own merits. I really enjoyed this TV version of Sandford and hope there are more. This is good TV.

We watched this movie because Mark Harmon was in it. But he did not live up to my expectations.

They probably cast him because of his character in NCIS, but his portrayal lacked the authority that Gibbs exudes. There were so many flaws in the story. Did anyone ever hear of fingerprints? The woman picking up bullets with her bare fingers? Puhleeze. And what about surveillance cameras? Or the old men hanging out of their windows ... Were they interviewed? No they'd rather just depend on a 5-year-old girl. This is just a ridiculous show.

It was close to unwatchable but my husband was enjoying it. But then, he actually enjoys cartoons. Enough said.

-- I read the book and was curios when I saw this was on. Well its a very low budget production and unfortunatley is barely a proffesional film let alone anything like an adaption of the book or any of the characters of the series.

The sets seem small and cramped, the cinematography is awkward, some of the actiong is really very poor and none of the characters end up at all belivable. Overall it all feels like a student project rather than a profesional enterprise. I know TV has come on a lot in the past ten years but even ten years ago it was rarely this poor.

Saw this mediocre movie for the first time last weekend. Was home sick in bed and desperate for any entertainment. Milding interesting, more as I live in the Minneapolis area (live only a few miles from the airport sign they show). Two days later I saw Lola Glaudini in almost the same role in the Law and Order episode "Loneyville" from 2007. In both she plays a sexy lesbian attorney who has a female partner in crime. I like her character in both but needed more sexuality than could be shown on TV. Really didn't like the ending in the movie. Could not believe that someone driving a convertible could fire a gun over the top of the front window and almost hit someone 100 yards away.

Certain Prey, first TV adaptation of a novel by John Sandford. Tenth book in the Prey series.

This is the first show that has me picking up a book, a book in series, an excellent series at that. A few people expect that a movie or TV adaptation of a book should be to the word, I don't see this even possible unless you make it into a series with-in itself. I loved this story the characters and the lead character Lucas Davenport in my opinion was wonderfully portrayed, by Mark Harmon.I have become a Prey series fan because of this movie and am looking forward to the next installment. Davenport is suspiciously close to Gibbs in a lot of ways, Mark Harmon, a Sandford fan no doubt, they are connected, IMO. I loved it. A terrific movie full of Suspense and thoroughly engaging.

I have read all of the Prey novels and am a big fan. I have been a Mark Harmon fan for years. I was thrilled to hear he would be playing Davenport and he did a pretty terrific job....if he'll lose the narration next time out.

But the casting? OMG, who did the casting? Carmel was a joke. The actress simply can't act. Rinker was good but Marcy? Hell, no! That has to be the worst casting this decade. Marcy is a tough as nails broad and not a bimbo.

Let's get some real casting next time around. Actors who are really worth the wait for the next Prey installment.