Annie (Caroline Goodall)is a battered wife. "In the end," she says in a voice-over at the beginning of the movie, "(my story) is just a little fairy tale about feeling desperate."
Annie is married to a Bill (Jon Gries), a cop and wife-beating control freak who won't let Annie get a job or a divorce. She has tried to run away, but he always catches her. And she knows that eventually he'll kill her.
He likes to remind her that he saved her from her sexually abusive father. As he slams her head to the floor, he screams something about "that freak called 'Daddy,' that sick old f--- !"
So, the idea of murdering Bill sounds pretty good to Annie.
Meanwhile, Bill's partner, Clark (Michael Beach), a good-hearted man, tries to help her. But he can offer her only the standard legal remedies that don't necessarily guarantee her safety.
Bill allows her to take a cooking class; she loves it, and it's a way to get out of the house. One evening the instructor introduces a new student, Tommy (Mark Harmon), to the class, and immediately he and Annie strike up a friendship.
She asks what he does for a living. "I kill people," he says -- and laughs, after a long pause. Uh, just joking...
Eventually she tells him about her predicament. He listens sympathetically, then mentions another solution, one that is more conclusive than anything Clark can offer.
She agrees to it, her problem is solved -- and then she finds out, to her horror, that when it comes to possessiveness, her husband was an amateur compared to Tommy.
I'm always wishing for better-than-average straight-to-video movies. And I got what I wished for with this film. Great acting (Goodall, Harmon, and Beach are simply perfect in their roles) and a script with frequent flashes of irony and wit make this a very entertaining and satisfying movie indeed.
This wasn't great art, but I liked it.
