anne-craig

Plot summary sounds great, but this is seriously dull. I love William Shatner, but he was the only good thing about this film. And even I admit that he has his limitations! The long pauses we have come to expect are definitely there, and he hams it up as always but nothing could save this film from boring me to death. If you're a big fan of Columbo or Murder She Wrote, maybe this will suit you. Se7en it ain't. The tedious will she/won't she romance between "our hero" and his long-distance girlfriend simply distracts from the plot, while a possibly interesting side-plot in which she is involved with a case of multiple personality disorder dissolves into nothing as the police try to find the deranged killer who has struck so brutally. Although the film doesn't actually tell you whodunit at the start like the Columbo format, I still guessed pretty early on, and the rest of the film seemed just to be padding. Might have made a decent half hour drama - but I doubt it.

A woman with previous mental problems comes to believe that the brutal serial killer preying on the local neighbourhood is her husband. This is less of a whodunit and more of a "is she right about whodunit?", well acted by Helen Mirren (who keeps her clothes on!) as the suspicious wife, and George Costigan who is the dodgy travelling salesman husband. As she follows the case, checking up on dates and times and growing ever more convinced, her suspicions are ridiculed by friends, family and police, all convinced that her previous mental illness is causing her to imagine the whole thing. Unusually, the film concentrates on the wife and the details of domestic life as they fall apart with the strain of suspicion, and the sadistic sexual murders are scarcely touched on - there's little in the way of gore or action here. The film does keep you unsure of whether she's right or wrong right up until the end, but the dreary domestic details and focus on the wife's mental state make this quite hard work - it felt so much longer than an hour and a half.

When I looked at the summary for this it immediately screamed X Files at me so I just had to have a look. Randy Quaid plays it just right as the convicted sex killer on death row. Throughout the film he is convincing in the part, and he definitely holds your attention throughout the movie. Unfortunately this film didn't quite live up to its promise, and is nowhere near as well-written as the X Files. However, there was definitely something which made me keep watching, despite the facts that I'd seen it all before, there was a lack of action and I knew where the film was going. The other actors were less convincing, and there was a general lack of characterisation, while the prison staff were definitely just stereotypes, without a shred of originality. Yet it moves along, sucks you into its atmosphere and holds you till the end.