Marriage of Lies

"Marriage of Lies," last Saturday's Lifetime "world premiere," turned out to be a surprisingly good suspense thriller, helped by the fact that it contains no openly violent scenes until the very end, one that puts its heroine into a Kafka-like peril that's frightening but plausible and keeps us identifying with her throughout. The heroine is Rachel Wilson (April Bowlby), who seems to be living a nice life in a small town with her husband Tye (Brody Hutzler) and their daughter Ella (Faith Graham). Then Tye suddenly disappears one morning and Rachel spends the next two days rather desultorily looking for him, including stopping by the high school where he's a teacher and athletic coach and trying to get information out of the students in his classes, including one young woman who definitely has a crush on him. Two days after he disappears, Rachel reports him to the police as missing, and the investigation spirals out of control as the police — Detective Roper (Zachary Garred) in particular (he's the partner of Gus, played by Corin Nemec, an older, more Clint Eastwood-esque cop who's more skeptical of the obvious conclusion that Rachel did something to her husband) — decide that Tye must have met with foul play and Rachel must be the guilty party. The people in this small town — who, like those in virtually all movie small towns, make it a point of getting into each other's business and gossiping about each other — decide Rachel is guilty even before the cops do, though one has to wonder throughout this whole movie, "Guilty of what?" (Apparently "Presumed Guilty" was the film's working title, and it might have been a better one for it.) There's no trace of what happened to Tye, no hint that he's either living or dead — certainly there's no body, and no one has any idea what might have happened to the body if Rachel (or someone else) murdered him. Rachel finds herself beset by her next-door neighbor from hell, town gossip DeeDee (Marcia Ann Burrs), as well as a freelance videographer who (like most of these "types" in movies) wears a Walter Winchell-style hat and seems to be modeling himself after the great gossip columnist of old, and whose schtick is to ambush Rachel and shove his camera in her face, demanding that she tell "the truth" about whatever is going on when she has no idea of what is going on. Rachel's only confidante is her long-time friend Jessica (Virginia Williams), who works at the local bar and who eagerly joins in the search for Tye, alive or dead. Once she realizes that the cops suspect her of either knocking off her husband or arranging her disappearance, Rachel hires an attorney, Dylan (Ryan Bittle, an unusually hunky actor for a Lifetime good guy), with whom she has an off-balance relationship because she's not convinced he thinks she's innocent and he tells her that doesn't matter; his job is to represent her interests whether she did anything criminal or not. "Marriage of Lies" isn't a great movie — it doesn't even reach the quality level of some of the Lifetime social-comment movies like "For the Life of a Child" or "Restless Virgins" — but on its own terms it's well made and well worth watching. Brian D. Young's script is coherent, relatively plausible and refreshingly unmelodramatic. Danny J. Boyle's direction is finely honed and refreshingly gimmick-free, and the acting, particularly April Bowlby's all-important performance as Rachel, is solidly professional and genuinely moving throughout.

"I don´t know"? "I love you to"! drinking white wine in the kitchen, with the best friend x 100 a child who always sleep and don´t know anything, about whats going on. Breathe a lot every time they have said a phrase(over dramatic). Breathe in their cups and glasses when they end their sentence. The movie will give a morale, eventually (nonsense): "you have a meaning until you get a new one". Annoying bad played movie. "Presumed crap"!

It was called good acting, the actress was acting bland and not emotional because her husband had her drugged up on the anti-depressants. She was doing that on purpose to act like a person on anti-depressants.

One thing I did find hysterical about the writing though is in one scene she says oh I can't drink because I am on anti-depressants but she is drinking wine in like every other scene of the movie.

The production values in this film are almost at a high school level. Pay attention to the detectives' 'office'. It's obviously an empty room with a few card tables and a computer. There's even a lone large target on a wall to make it look 'official'. Ditto the bar which is probably a nearby motel's watering hole. There's awful stuff like this all over the movie. I swear the final scene was shot on a high school auditorium stage. It was laughable. And the plot? Ridiculous. The reactions to revelations? There are none. Here's an example, the wife of the missing person goes to the high school where he works. The principal informs her that her husband didn't show up for work and that the principal just assumed that he was too ill to come in. After the wife says that her husband was feeling fine the principal says, 'tell him we hope he's feeling better real soon.' There's nonsense like that all through this thing. Some of the acting is so bad that you'll think it's intentional. The junior DA and the school janitor are particularly awful.

So, why not a '1'? Because the lead actress has stunning eyes. And that's all this bomb has going for it.

Boy those writers of Lifetime movies have cushy jobs - just slam some script together based on one of about six themes, don't read it over, and there you have it.

Okay, in this one, Marriage of Lies, granted, I didn't see the first few minutes. But here's what happened: Rachel, the wife (April Bowlby) of a teacher, Tye (Brody Hutzler) goes to the school where he teaches and asks to speak to him. She finds out he didn't come in. She leaves. She figures he needs some space as she did at one point during their marriage.

Her best friend insists that she call the police the next day. The wife tells the police that she saw him in the morning two days ago and he was on his way to school. The detective asks, how does he get to school? She answers, he takes his bike. We only have the one car.

The detective walks into the man cave and says, is this the bike he rides to school? Yes, she says. So obviously he never rode the bike to school even though she went to school looking for him and told the detective that the last time she saw him, he was on his way to school.

Since that happened in the beginning, it bothered me throughout the whole episode as I sat waiting for the detective to pick up on it. But then, this isn't Columbo.

Of course, Rachel comes under suspicion, particularly by the junior detective (Zachary Garred) who is sure she is involved in her husband's disappearance.

There is no mistaking April Bowlby's voice or enunciation. She is stunning as a brunette. She plays a woman on antidepressants (which the police feel is the sign of a raving maniac) who is attempting to stay calm and measured, which is interpreted as unconcerned.

The acting is okay here - Zach Garred is Australian and pulls off an American accent very well. This cast is a bit above the usual, also including Corin Nemec, Jimmy Deshler, and Eric Scott Woods.

All in all, typical Lifetime fare with a major plot hole.