We watched it - it was a passable time-waster built around a very charming leading lady, Brooke Burns (film a.k.a. 'Trophy Wife').
She won't challenge Meryl Streep for acting honors, but this was a low-budget vehicle built around the familiar device of a pretty, but determined, main character under attack by a sinister guy (a hacker, an extortionist, a serial killer, a combo - you choose). She will have to resolve to defeat him herself - there's no 'buddy' waiting to bail her out. In this case, the bad guy extorts money from women who have lost rich, but unpleasant, husbands in 'untimely deaths' - deaths he caused, 'on spec' - that is, on 'speculation' that the women will gladly pay a commission to be rid of the villainous 'ex'. It's not an entirely new idea - Alfred Hitchcock used a similar twist in his old TV mystery show.
The difference here is that the villain claims to be able to implicate poor Brooke in the murder-for-hire. That part is stretchy. Nonetheless, the camera work is nifty (reminding me of a Director using tribute-type camera angles to echo the genre), and the gadgetry makes for interesting - if implausible - entertainment.
It took me a while to realize that the 'killer' had his victims 'over a barrel' - they paid, instead of going to the Police. No wonder they don't want to talk to Brooke when she starts investigating these cases herself: these 'victims' are complicit in a crime. It's an intriguing kind of 'con' - you can't go to the Police with your story, after you pay. hmmmmmmmmmmmm.
While the computer and technical abilities of the perpetrator are strictly sci-fi, we saw a similar device used in a big-budget British mini-series with John Hannah entitled 'Amnesia'. The bad guy's ability to produce phony tech data was essential to moving the plot forward, and building the suspense to a surprising climax. The device isn't as well orchestrated in 'Trophy Wife', but it serves the same purpose: it keeps our hero fighting to get her story believed.
Finally: life has a way of imitating art.. as silly as the plot might seem, there are fraud, and murder-for-profit cases in the true-life crime annals that seem stranger than anything we've read in fiction.
So, I gave the film a 7 - for the 'heroine-battles-super-bad-guy-B-movie-suspense' genre.
