BEFORE: My second day of trying to see Manhattanhenge ended up going much better than the first. Of course, it was also more crowded since the word got out, and I joined a small army of amateur photographers on 42nd St., just west of 7th Ave. There was sort of a dead lane of traffic, so this was much easier than trying to take pictures while the "Walk" sign was on, plus I had learned the night before, when I stood on 5th Ave., that I needed to be further west to clear the trees at Bryant Park. The sky cooperated by not being very cloudy, and the sight of the red setting sun framed between the buildings turned out to be enough to stun even jaded New Yorkers. I got the pictures I wanted, and 5 minutes later, everyone went back to their business, like nothing had happened at all.
Linking from "Identity Thief", Amanda Peet was also in "Melinda and Melinda" with Matt Servitto.
AFTER: They make a note of pointing out that this is based on true events - apparently there was some sort of national trend (or one VERY busy guy) where people would call fast-food joints and pretend to be policemen, and then try to see how much trouble they could get random employees into, by accusing them of theft or other misdeeds.
In a sense, it's a variation on psychological tests like the Milgram experiment, in which people were instructed to give shocks to lab volunteers, to see what lengths people would go to in order to follow instructions of authority figures, or similar studies in which some subjects were turned into mock jailers and others into mock prisoners. The manager of a fast food restaurant is already something of a mid-level authority figure, so when given instructions from the corporate office, or an unseen policeman, about how to handle her staff, as you might imagine that person would feel caught in the middle, yet still might blindly obey.
In the film, the policeman's questions get more and more personal, as the requests get stranger, which results in unauthorized strip-searching, and other things which are tantamount to rape. For that reason, this film may be hard to watch - but on another level is important, because the public should be made away of any phone scam that's going around. Like most phone scams, the caller asks the most basic questions, and the recipient is likely to fill in the gaps, without even realizing it. In this case, he only has to say that a female employee with blonde hair has been accused of stealing from a customer, and the manager is likely to say, "Oh, you mean Becky?" And, the fish is on the hook.
It's a sick world when someone out there is getting off on rape-by-proxy, or at least forced strip searches via phone. But it also falls on the parties who receive the call to draw the line somewhere, to wonder why the police officer on the phone isn't conducting the search himself, or for that matter, why his police investigative work is being done by phone and not in person.
Also starring Ann Dowd (last seen in "The Notorious Bettie Page"), Dreama Walker (last seen in "Gran Torino"), Philip Ettinger, Pat Healy, Bill Camp (last seen in "Lawless"), Ashlie Atkinson.
RATING: 4 out of 10 slices of bacon
