Locklear and Strauss are badly addled with a terrible screenplay here, but they both turn in fine performances.
Given the length of the film, one would think a great deal more actual detail could have been given to the viewer. So much was left out, and so much more was just wrong. A good example is the infamous house on Mockingbird Lane. At the time this film was made (and even today) the mansion is still standing and it would seem that the actual house could have been used for exterior shots (or even architectural renderings), but instead, a completely different house was inexplicably used. The house on Mockingbird Lane was extremely modern and minimalist in design (by late 1960s standards), and the producers of this film instead used the generic tasteless quasi-European Tudor McMansion of the 1990s. Pointless stupidity.
And this script fairly reeks with similar factual missteps, and for no justifiable reason. As a native Texan who closely followed the trial at the time (you couldn't be here and NOT follow it), this sort of thing is extremely irritating. If the viewer can get past that, both Peter Strauss and Heather Locklear turn in fine performances (one of Locklear's best) and seem to have some genuine understanding of the characters they are portraying. Given the scarcity of film on the Cullen Davis trial (the only other instance I am aware of is an episode of A & E's American Justice devoted to the subject), I recommend this as the best of the very little that is offered.
