Deceptive Intentions

This film begins with a young girl going to the local grocery store and, while shopping, observes the store clerk being robbed at gunpoint. Immediately afterward, in apparent fascination at what just happened, the young girl then follows the robber out into the street. The scene then shifts to several years later with that same girl, by the name of "Vanessa" (Marissa Miller), having now grown up and working as an exotic dancer at a local club in Memphis, Tennessee. Naturally, being rather attractive, she is often propositioned by some of the customers and--for a fee--sometimes goes home with them. In addition to that, she also works as a limo driver some nights while doubling as a money collector for a local drug dealer as well. To that extent, while she may look nice and friendly, deep down she is a cold-blooded creature who is capable of killing a person with very little provocation and absolutely no remorse. In short, she is a one-person crime wave. So much so, that the local police, headed by a detective named "Derek Carter" (Christopher Allen) is having a hard time connecting the dead victims to the same person. Be that as it may, one day he happens to meet an attractive young lady in the parking lot of a nearby shopping center and sparks fly between them. What he doesn't realize, of course, is just how dangerous this woman actually is. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that I happened to notice a previous review of this film and, being somewhat curious, I decided to give it a try. Unfortunately, as it turns out, I have to agree with the previous reviewer who lamented the low-budget aspects of the movie along with the extremely cheap-looking sets. It was all very noticeable. Likewise, I thought that the ending left much to be desired as well. And while Marissa Miller performed adequately enough, I thought that there were a couple of the other actors who weren't nearly as polished. But that is just my opinion. In any case, due in large part to its low-budget constraints, I honestly have a hard time rating this film any higher than I have.

I must admit that I wasn't exactly harboring much of any high hopes or expectations to this 2020 action movie titled "Deceptive Intentions" as I sat down to watch it. First of all, I hadn't ever heard about it prior to sitting down to watch it. And secondly, the movie's cover and synopsis just didn't have top notch entertainment written all over it.

But I still opted to give "Deceptive Intentions" a fair chance.

Writer Kenya Hendricks put together a script that definitely had some potential to it, I will say that. However, director Robert L. Parker III just failed to cash in on that potential in a gratifying manner, because the movie was incredibly slow paced and just permeated low budget and homemade video all over it.

The acting performances were often amateurish and cringeworthy, though there were some of the actors and actresses that seemed to be knowing what they were doing. But the overall feel here was that this was more of a homemade film and not a proper movie.

Needless to say that I wasn't familiar with the cast ensemble in this movie.

Then there was the audio problems. In some scenes, and there were a handful of them, the audio was really low and you could barely hear the dialogue. Had it not been because of the option to put on English subtitles, then some scenes would have been totally lost in meaning, as the audio was so low.

And the sets, talk about homemade. Whatever was supposed to pass as an expensive restaurant was obviously just recorded in someone's living room. And the police detective office was plainly recorded in someone's garage. It just screamed low budget and amateurish production. And it was hard to take anything serious in those sets.

I will say that it definitely felt like the crew and performers wanted to make a proper movie and felt like they had all the right intentions and spirit. But the production of the movie was just an uphill obstacle holding the movie back.

My rating of "Deceptive Intentions" lands on a generous three out of ten stars.