BEFORE: Up a bit early on a Saturday, to drive out to Long Island - I blocked this day off from my theater shift calendar, because there was a memorial lunch for my wife's aunt, not a blood relative but a woman who was married to my wife's mother's brother, who died years ago. The wake and funeral were a couple months ago, but they put off the lunch until the weather got better. Today was a weird mix of sunshine and sudden downpours, but I guess that's better than snow. Anyway, it's also a little weird that a woman who I never met died a few months back, and somehow out of that, I get a free lunch at a Chinese restaurant - but I guess that's just how things go sometimes. One day it could be my turn, if one of my parents dies then I'll have to treat a bunch of people to lunch, unless this is just a New York thing. I've been to several restaurant meals in NYC after somebody dies, perhaps in other places there are potluck dinners or other types of things, I don't know, but here some restaurants have bereavement menus, it's a thing. I ordered the boneless pork ribs, and they gave me a sizable portion, with wonton soup and a giant egg roll, and the Chinese restaurant was one of those big banquet hall type places, and it felt like they hadn't updated the decor since 1957 or so.
Ed Harris carries over from "Resistance", and since my Ed Harris chain is going to carry over until tomorrow, when it transitions into a Gerard Butler chain, I feel like poor Sally Field can't catch a break, where the linking is concerned. She was in "Legally Blonde 2" back in February, and that film was needed to make a very specific connection during the romance chain, and now this film is serving a purpose here, but it's not to link to any of her other films. I've been trying to watch "Norma Rae" for quite some time now, and it's just not happening - I thought that might make a great Labor Day film, but several Labor Days have come and gone since I dubbed that film to DVD - I also recently dubbed a copy of "Kiss Me Goodbye", which is sharing a disc with today's film, and that's a weird little ghost story / romance / comedy that doesn't seem to fit anywhere, either. Maybe I just have to bite the bullet and program those films, but right now I've tentatively put them between an Adam Sander film that has James Caan in it, and "The Good German" with Beau Bridges in it. That's a weird chain for sure, but oddly, I could see it becoming relevant between Halloween and Thanksgiving - but it's impossible to predict if that could work out later this year.
THE PLOT: When the courts fail to keep the man who raped and murdered her daughter behind bars, a woman seeks her own form of justice.
AFTER: I don't know, this film feels like it hasn't aged all that well - it was released in 1996, and since then I've seen many other films on the same topic, from "Peppermint" to the "Death Wish" remake, and most of those films seem better, or at least more relevant, than this one. If this film were a plotline on "Law & Order: SVU" I'd probably feel like it was missing something, like where's the big twist? Not that every film has to have one, but it's nice when they do. The big pivot point here is when the rapist/murderer gets released on a technicality, and that's not a twist, it's just a big bummer.
After that, the big revelation is that a normal housewife can take self-defense classes and also train how to use a gun, but don't we kind of know all that already? Was this somehow shocking, back in 1996? I'm trying to think that far back, but honestly, I was pretty busy that year, getting divorced and trying to put my life back together. Probably half of that year is a big blur for me, it was a time of big changes, and I probably didn't have much interest in going out to see movies. But, I did meet my second wife later that year, so it wasn't ALL bad - and then I started seeing movies again, like our first movie together was "Big Night", but I'm getting off track. I'm old and now I tend to ramble.
The rape and murder of a teenage girl is a pretty shocking, and emotionally charged topic, but this film sort of chooses to deal with that by not dealing with it, if that makes any sense. What does it MEAN in the big picture, beyond the fact that it, you know, really sucks? The film can't just show her parents crying hysterically for a week, that wouldn't make for a good movie, so instead we see them sleeping over a friend's house, trying to get back to their normal lives but having a difficult time of it, and then attending meetings with a support group for people who've lost loved ones due to violent crimes. I feel like maybe the film is all around it without really getting into it, which might be a choice, or perhaps an admission that nobody could possibly know how bad that feels unless it also happened to them. Maybe if a movie really did depict the full depths of tragedy, then nobody would want to watch that?
Instead we see a mother upset that her husband washed her late daughter's pillow, and now it no longer smells like her daughter. Oof, now maybe we're getting closer to tragic events, but it's still just not enough. That girl is GONE, all the things she wanted to do are GONE, and she left an empty space that can't be filled up. If you can't show that in a movie, can't you at least TRY? I know, it's not really about the pillow, but come on, there must be another way.
Karen McCann, in addition to the self-defense classes and weapons training, then starts to follow around the man suspected of killing her daughter, and she does rather a poor job of hiding, so he's on to her pretty quickly. This leads the murderer to follow HER around, and also figure out the routine of her younger daughter, then he creepily visits her during recess. OK, this is about when the audience realizes the guy is a complete garbage human, because he threatens a little girl just to get the heat off of him. Threats from the police don't seem to mean anything to him, and so this leads to Karen trying to hire someone from the support group to kill him, which she suspects they've done before.
For convoluted reasons, this doesn't work out, forcing her to come up with a more elaborate plan to lure him out, to get him to threaten her directly so she can kill him in self-defense. I can't really say this is the best plan, but I suppose the other advice, to just leave him alone, isn't really an ideal solution, either. Clearly something must be done, if the law can't prosecute him and she can't just hire somebody to kill him - but this is the classic conundrum over how to deal with violence. Responding with violence will just drag someone down to his level, as killing a killer also makes THAT person a killer, and then where does it stop? I also understand that Karen just couldn't leave well enough alone, because that would only lead to him hurting and killing more people, he wasn't going to stop, but still I'm not convinced this was the best solution.
Without giving too much away here, which actually is darn near impossible, I just want to point out that not every shot needs to be a kill shot - I've never fired a real gun, or had any kind of weapons training, but I guessing that they probably teach you that you can shoot to disarm, or shoot to harm but not kill. I'm just putting that out there as a possible solution, but then I guess that wouldn't wrap things up quite as thoroughly at the close of a film.
Also starring Sally Field (last seen in "Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde"), Kiefer Sutherland (last seen in "The Sentinel"), Joe Mantegna, Beverly D'Angelo (last seen in "Playing It Cool"), Olivia Burnette, Alexandra Kyle (last seen in "13 Going on 30"), Darrell Larson (last seen in "Winter Passing"), Charlayne Woodard (last seen in "Glass"), Philip Baker Hall (last seen in "Clear History"), Keith David (last seen in "Death at a Funeral" (2010)), Armin Shimerman, Natalija Nogulich (last seen in "The Last Word"), Nicholas Cascone, Stella Garcia, Justine Johnston (last seen in "The New Guy"), Wayne Pére (last seen in "Shock and Awe"), Joan Crowe, Ross Bagley, Jane Morris (last seen in "The Laundromat"), Cynthia Rothrock, Donal Logue (last seen in "Steal This Movie"), William Mesnik, Rondi Reed (last seen in "You Don't Know Jack"), Eric Morris, Bob Clendenin (last seen in "Race to Witch Mountain").
RATING: 4 out of 10 motions to dismiss
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