Don't Talk to Strangers

This was decent film, not worth getting totally excited about, but still very much recommend. The problem is that if you haven't seen this film by now, you probably won't unless someone puts it out on DVD. It's been over 10 years since I saw this, and the photography was good enough to make want to see this again, this time on a widescreen DVD format.

For a film that isn't well-known and stars an unknown actress (along with the known Pierce Brosnan), this was a well-acted, nicely-filmed movie. It movies well and has some nice twists to it, guaranteed to keep the first-time viewer interested. It will keep you guessing.

Terry O'Quinn played the best role in here, in my opinion. Reed did a nice job of acting but I didn't care for her persona. Kudos to Richard Leiterman for his photography.

What I didn't understand was the movie's "R" rating. There was very little profanity in here, very little blood and no nudity. What gives? It did read "R" on my VHS tape.

This movie had a surprising end! But I loved it anyways! A nice movie to relax with...especially when my fav. actor Pierce Brosnan is in it!!

It's interesting to see what shape Pierce Brosnan's career was in before Bond arrived on the scene. In this "tense" thriller, Pierce Brosnan plays the gentle Patrick, who works leading ghetto kids on "confidence courses". He romances a woman, who has a bog-standard mop-top mid-90s kid called Eric. The woman's drunken ex-husband soon arrives on the scene and begins to mess with Pierce.

At one stage Pierce is innocently making "vegeburgers". The husband enters. Pierce resumes making vegeburgers. The husband then assaults Pierce. Little chunks of half-eaten vegeburger call fall from Pierce's mouth. The fight abruptly ends without showing the outcome. This is as good as the film gets.

A conventional genre for filmmakers may be titled Theatre of Paranoia, within which are copious examples, this piece being one, wherein a protagonist is stalked or harried or wrongly envisioned or trapped or prejudiced against, i.e., in some way made to suffer by, generally, one person distracted by jealousy or some other mania. The victim here is Jane Bonner, splendidly played by Shanna Reed, who is tormented by her former husband Robert (Terry O'Quinn), a police detective with an extraordinary amount of free time who is maddened due to the disbanding of a joint custody agreement for the ex-couple's eight-year-old son, during divorce proceedings, Bonner's harassment becoming so acute that Jane and her new spouse Patrick (Pierce Brosnan) decide to leave their Saint Louis home and drive to California to start life anew, only to have Bonner trail them. Director Robert Lewis paces the film solidly during its initial scenes only to have his efforts hamstrung by excessive cutting along with a disjointed screenplay that is heavily reliant upon fancy, in addition to below standard post-production work (e.g., a car following Jane and Patrick is seen being driven from both sides of the front seat by its sole occupant), and a garish lack of knowledge concerning law enforcement procedures is only too evident.

Throughout this foolish affair that the film becomes, Reed shines, easily gathering in acting honours with a subtly layered and credible performance, and O'Quinn also acts well, especially in light of his written dialogue. Richard Leiterman's cinematography is expert as always and fitting underscoring is contributed by Joseph Conlan, but the scenario's collapse into nearly total incongruity and odd character metamorphosis becomes too great of a handicap.

Scenes that cut from dramatic-seeming build-ups to something that may or may not show the conclusion. A speech or two from the strong, nearly independent main, and of course female, character, to one of the weaker, and in general lesser, men. Crying, if however brief, in the shower. This really has all that makes a Lifetime flick, though I don't know if it actually is one. I don't have a problem with women being empowered, or a lot of airtime being dedicated to it, I just think that the films can be less clichéd than I understand they are. With that said, the twists in this are pretty unexpected and interesting, if not necessarily all credible. Also, that's about where the above-average qualities end. The writing sacrifices realism and consistency for victimization and aforementioned surprise occurrences whenever they saw fit to do so. The "action" tends to be so half-heartedly put on the screen that you can't tell what's going on. The cinematography ranges between passable and just plain uninspired. The acting varies, O'Quinn outshines the rest, and not all of his fellow performers are awful. The kid actively appeared daft, both real life and his character. The language is fairly limited, a couple of moderate strength words here and there, and nothing else particularly objectionable, apart from perhaps the thematic material and a little violence. The entire thing is "fine". Could do worse, won't be difficult to do better. I recommend it to big fans of those involved, and those absolutely famished for a crime-thriller they haven't yet watched. 6/10