Determination of Death

This was both a mystery and a thriller. Marc Singer played a villain wife beater in this, scheming to get a ton load of cash by faking his death. It doesn't turn out like planned. It got me guessing all the way through. Besides the awesome acting, there is the beautiful scenery of the beach.

Not the best on TV movie lists. A stellar cast does mediocre job with bad script. I guessed the killer from the beginning. Won't reveal. A shame to make you watch this terrible movie to find out, but thoze the rules, baby. With the likes of Veronica Hamel as her usual cold look self, Michele Greene, a bit on the boring side, John Ratzenberger a bit on the over weight side, William Katt, looking middle aged these days, George Dzundza, looking like he's serious about this movie, Marty Papazian, looking like he doesn't know what's going on, Alice Hirson, looking like she's lost Ellen DeGeneras and Marc Singer giving an over the hill acting job. Way over the hill.

Now some of these actors are good actors. So you hate to see them do a bad job, but this script demands it from them. I hate to think of the money it cost to hire them, so my heart goes out to the producer.

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.

Decent cast but the plot plodded along very slowly. It was very hard to suffer all the way to the end. A few twists here and there towards the end helped a little but not a lot.

Great little made-for-tv murder mystery with a real shocker at the end... Good script, acting was solid, well shot and edited. By all means, this is not big Hollywood stuff, but it was excellent for what it is. I really enjoyed it overall and would recommend it as a good rainy-day popcorn flick.