Criminal Intent

IMDb member Caa821 felt the comments were more entertaining than the movie. I think Caa821's comments were more entertaining than the movie.

"Criminal Intent" follows the Lifetime TV template to a 'T': familiar stars (Vanessa Angel and Linda Purl), with the rest of the cast being not only unfamiliar but fairly poor actors; filmed in Canada; derivative; moves slowly; predictable.

Angel plays a defense attorney turned divorce attorney whose good friend is murdered, with the woman's ex-husband being accused. He wants her to go back to her defense roots and represent him, even though she handled their divorce. She agrees and comes up against a tough DA (Purl).

There is a twist in the story, but I don't know who's comparing this to Alfred Hitchcock. The acting is lethargic, and Angel's collagen lips are distracting.

As I mentioned in a previous post, these mindless Lifetime movies are great for a Sunday afternoon or when you're trying to sleep, and they give work to formerly prolific actors like Purl. I have to commend Lifetime for hiring 40+ actresses who find themselves "aged out" of Hollywood.

Decided to watch this film on "Lifetime" Channel and was quite surprised with the great acting and a very tricky plot, which kept you just wondering who was the bad guy or girl. The opening scene has lots of blood all over the place as a person gets chopped up like CHOPPED LIVER. The knife is removed and from then on the story has many twists and turns that keeps you on the edge of your seat. Lots of romantic scenes and you will never guess how the picture ends. A divorce lawyer comes to the aid of a client and winds up having to defend her ex-husband who is accused of killing his wife. This is a rather different murder mystery and it is a film that is very worth your while to sit back and ENJOY !

I usually like most movies, I'm easy to please and I tend to give 10 stars if the movie fulfils my expectations and entertains me, but this one, well it was not entertaining. It was one of the worst movies I've seen. For an hour we are led to believe one thing, and in the last 30 minutes we discover that we have been misled and something totally different is going on. I felt fooled. Then we are treated to so many imaginary theories of what may have transpired, like imaginary "flashbacks" which add nothing to the story, they are "what ifs" as the investigators try to imagine what really happened. Various details aren't even believable. The motives aren't convincing either. Nothing could save this movie, it was like hard work trying to follow all the twists and turns at the end, it was more work than pleasure. Can't recommend this flop, it's worth less than 3 stars but I'm trying to be generous, as some might like it.

As the plot for a film goes, it was good and gripping. However, as others have commented, with the exception of a few, the acting was not exactly master-class. In particular, Vanessa Angel - is she really a professional actress ? or did she do it for a dare, and as for the wig she was wearing ............. Linda Purl certainly held the film together, and did her best with a script that could have been a bit more "meatier". I felt the camera angles were "interesting" at times, and thought the cameraman was attempting to speed things up a bit with his whizzing around the room moments. Overall, the plot made for good watching, but could have been made even better with a superior cast list.

Watched the first scene, and none of it made any sense. #1. Why would the police be the only ones called to the scene, I mean its a stabbing. You would think just maybe, paramedics might be a more important in this situation. #2. The 911 operator gives completely false instructions on how to perform CPR. You don't breath into the mouth first, you do that after at least 30 hard pumps into the chest. #3. Why in the world would you pull out the knife as you hear police sirens, instead of pulling it out while she was dying? This was all just unbelievably stupid and so I fortunately decided not to waste 2 hours of my life watching this crap. 3 minutes is all it took to fail, yikes.