FBI: Negotiator

Laura Martin (Elisabeth Röhm) is a single mom and an FBI negotiator replacing the sexist angry veteran Agent Carlo. She's secretly dating her superior Frank Gerrard. Her daughter Taylor is best friends with sickly Annie Moss (Britt McKillip) and her mother Elizabeth (Chandra West). Annie is desperate for a transplant. Laura is sidelined after a difficult negotiation and then Elizabeth takes hostages at the hospital to get her daughter into an experimental trial.

This is a TV movie. It is awkwardly clunky at times. It can't exceed its TV essence. The leads are fine actors. It pushes the melodrama too hard. It struggles to be something more. None of it is anything exception.

Terrible acting coupled with terrible cheesy lines. It is so bad, it is not even fit for TV. Everything is predictable. The target audience is the hate filled feminists.

Misandry is rampant at every turn. The show is filled with sick feminist propaganda. The feminist politics is so intoxicating, it makes the show seem more like a feminist hate session than a session of negotiation.

She has to constantly tell the men they have to lower standards so she will make the grade. Of course when she fails we are to overlook it because she needs a handicap. Use your intuition and avoid this like the plague. Don't waste your time on this trash.

At the start of the movie, a hostage situation ends badly. Well, maybe not that badly, but I won't say why.

But FBI negotiator Laura Martin, who has been divorced for several years, has a bigger problem. Her daughter Taylor thinks Laura cares more about her job than her daughter. After all, Laura is late picking up Taylor from school.

Taylor's bitterness is normal enough for a teenager (there is the obligatory locking herself in her room and turning up this so-called music so loud it makes the world go away). And one of her problems is that her mother is dating Frank, another FBI agent. She hates him. But Taylor's problems are minor compared to those of her best friend Annie.

Annie may die soon unless she can get an experimental treatment from Barraby Hospital, which happens to be located in the same city where Annie lives. Annie's father has died, but at least he had a good insurance policy, so her mother Elizabeth can concentrate on caring for her daughter. Unfortunately, this hospital cannot afford to give the treatment Annie needs to everyone who wants it (at this stage, insurance won't help), and a lottery determines the "winners".

Another hostage incident ends badly, this one at a prison that houses mentally ill patients. Laura doesn't follow procedure and she may lose her job (which would be fine with Agent Di Carlo, who she replaced). But she will have one chance to redeem herself.

This movie was almost a total waste of time. It seemed like five minutes couldn't pass without Laura on the verge of crying or Taylor being a brat. There are some tender moments that last about three seconds. But then comes the one hostage incident that almost--ALMOST--makes the movie work. Still, there are unnecessary and ridiculous complications, and people who seem to have little regard for their fellow human beings--if you are a criminal, it seems you deserve to die just because you can be killed.

Elisabeth Rohm had her occasional good moments, most of them related to her ability as a negotiator. Even if she doesn't always go by the book, she has the best of intentions. But there's nothing outstanding here.

Okay, I watch Lifetime, I admit it. About four out of every ten movies are pretty decent and once in awhile there is a really good one. It passes the time when I need something relaxing. This movie actually made me gag, it is that bad, from beginning to end. The characters started out being pretty interesting but every scene got worse, I don't know how the actors got through it, they must have been thinking after each absurd scene that their careers would be ruined forever just from being associated with this movie! Not one plot line or scene felt real or at all believable, and it wasn't because of bad acting. Who in the world wrote the script and how could it have been approved? The last 15 minutes of the film really made me angry, I sat there with my mouth open saying "really?". Sorry for the rant, but I just had to warn people not to waste two hours on this.

We begin "4 Days Earlier" with the robbery of a convenience store. It becomes a dangerous hostage situation. The swaying, shaky camera-work is dizzying and makes it difficult to watch. But this effect is used mainly for the hostage situations. The significance of "4 Days" is unclear, and action likely changes to the present somewhere early in the running time. Our heroine is pretty blonde FBI agent Elizabeth Rohm (as Laura Martin). She specializes in hostage situations; when a mishap incurs a lawsuit, she is given an unplanned vacation. Divorced a year, Ms. Rohm dates her FBI agent partner, athletically-built Woody Jeffreys (as Frank Gerrard)...

Rohm's teen daughter Taylor-Anne Reid (as Taylor) misses her dad and resents Mr. Jeffreys horning in on the family. They are friendly with pretty blonde housewife Chandra West (as Elizabeth "Beth" Moss) and her teen daughter Britt McKillip (as Annie Moss). Unfortunately, Ms. West's daughter is deathly ill. When mother West learns her daughter's experimental medication will be discontinued, she becomes desperate. It climaxes with a hostage situation at "Burnaby Hospital". The mother/daughter scenes are nice, Jerry Wasserman (as Jon Di Carlo) and the supporting cast add some spark, but "FBI: Negotiator" never takes you hostage.

*** FBI: Negotiator (10/24/05) Nicholas Kendall ~ Elizabeth Rohm, Chandra West, Woody Jeffreys, Taylor-Anne Reid