Determination of Death

It's a long way from Hill Street to this, but Veronica Hamel is still good to watch. In this case in an interesting situation wherein everybody would like to see her brother-in-law dead. And this seems to happen without anyone knowing how. Then a fat insurance policy turns up, the company sends in their investigators, but nobody finds out anything – except the spectator in the last five seconds. Ho, hum; good TV-style scripting, as may be guessed from the director's experience in producing these kinds of films. Of course Hamel is OK, and Michele Green is quite good, but Marc Singer as her husband has played this rôle so many times he did not have to try very much. The result is an entertaining TV-style film, with only a little violence at the beginning, and lightly humourous touches to keep things rolling. Nothing difficult: just to keep you amused trying to guess who did what to whom – and you won't get it right! Worth five out of ten, simply because it does not try to be pretentious and does not leave you with a headache afterwards.

Everyone is a suspect, everyone had a motive, everyone had plenty of reasons to kill that particularly beastly man who only made a nuisance of himself and destroyed everyone's lives, and yet the mystery of his death becomes unfathomable, everyone groping around in the dark for any clue without finding anything except loose ends, and yet it is all perfectly clear. The tempo is slow to begin with but gradually builds up into a tremendous pile of mysteries collapsing into nothingness, as actually everyone is more or less proved innocent or at least convincingly so. And yet there is still the final dot on the final i in the end.

The acting is gorgeous, everyone is absolutely convincing, Michele Greene almost takes the prize with hard competition from Veronica Hamel, not even Marc Singer is overacting, while I still would like to propose George Dzundza, the insurance agent with some experience, as the ultimate glory of the show. The dialog is terrific all the way, the music is excellent without being intruding, in brief, this is something of a perfect thriller.

The whodunit is a genre that has not fared well over the years. Murder, She Wrote is typical - uninteresting stories, poor acting (except, in M,SW, for the lead actress) and an unimaginative climax. This movie is the very rare exception. The story is quite good for a TV movie and the actors keep you engaged. Yes, Marc Singer's performance is over the top, but so is his character, as evil a villain as you'll find in any film. Singer is a fine actor, which makes his wildly intense bad guy a pleasure to watch. All of the other actors do a better than creditable job, and the ending is a genuine surprise and makes sense to boot. The writing is entertainingly manipulative, designed to keep you guessing and off the track. -- Remarkably, the movie never drags and everything going on is essential to the internal logic of the story - except of course for the obligatory love interest between Greene's and Katt's characters. And the use of flashbacks to the attempted murder is a bit overdone. But on the whole this film is far better paced and absorbing than 8 or 9 out of 10 of the TV thrillers turned out these days.

There is hardly anyone in the cast that I particularly like and would normally tune in to watch. However, I recorded this and figured I could dump it if it wasn't good.

I didn't dump it.

I will say nothing about the plot--except that it will probably keep you guessing to the end. (At one point I correctly figured it out, but I soon changed my mind.) The clues are all there, so you won't feel cheated by the ending--surprised probably, but not cheated.

As for the cast, everyone is good. However, Veronica Hamel and Michele Green are not aging too well. Greene was, surprisingly, much less annoying than I usually find her; and John Ratzenberger was very likable in a totally different, for him, role.

This is a very good movie with lots of twists and turns in the plot. Veronica Hamel stars as an attorney whose brother-in-law dies while hunting with Hamel's husband.

What no one knows is that the evil brother-in-law and the wife he has abused planned to fake his death to get their hands on a $5 million insurance policy. Someone, however, would rather that his death be real, but a bullet only wounds him.

Insurance investigators William Katt and George Dzunda descend upon the family to investigate, since there's no body. Dzunda smells a rat; Katt is sympathetic towards Greene.

Marc Singer is the husband in a familiar role for him. Michele Greene is very good as his wife, and Hamel is always interesting to watch.

New information keeps popping up as the story goes along, making it not only more interesting, but much less straightforward as to what happened to Singer, who planned what, etc. The family turns out to be a lot more complex than it seems on the surface.

Very entertaining and absorbing, and you won't guess the ending.