BEFORE: Out yesterday working at a screening of "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire", and since I already did a shift with "Monkey Man" a few weeks ago, and there's yet another "Planet of the Apes" movie due out in May, I don't want to alarm anyone, but we could be headed for another "Hot Monkey Summer". Or it means that monkey pox is coming back, you never know. Does anyone remember monkey pox? Just me?
At the moment I don't see anything on the horizon that would make me go buy a movie ticket. I sat out "Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire" because it wasn't the right time of year, and I avoided "Rebel Moon" so far, also "Dune II" and "Civil War". I feel like all of these films are going to catch up with me on streaming in a few months, so where's the point in buying a movie ticket? I haven't been to the AMC I used to work at since last summer, it's a weird feeling, but I guess I've moved on.
I came home from "Godzilla x Kong" (not sure what the "x" means) and we watched "24 in 24: Last Chef Standing", which is a new cooking competition that we're SO there for, and then I got to my movie, I had this on a home-made DVD but I also checked and it looked available on demand still, which is better because captions. But I got three minutes in and realized that was the WRONG "No Good Deed", there's another movie with the same name that came out in 2002 and stars Samuel L. Jackson. So that wasn't going to work, watching that would break the chain, so I had to get up out of the recliner and switch to the DVD, so no captions - the other choice was to go upstairs and watch it on Hulu, but I didn't want to do that.
Taraji P. Henson carries over again from "Proud Mary".
THE PLOT: An unstable escaped convict terrorizes a woman who is alone with her two children.
AFTER: OK, real simple one tonight, because there's nothing complicated about a sociopath, right? Or is it a psychopath? I get those two mixed up. A guy breaks out of prison custody while he's being transported back to prison after his parole hearing, which was, shocker, unsuccessful. This is why the smarter cities now hold their parole hearings AT the prison, or better yet, by zoom conference. (I'm guessing, I don't really know.). Colin Evans claims to be a changed man, but then one of the witnesses speaking against him points out that he COULD be lying, and that he's very charismatic and persuasive, also a lying liar.
After Colin escapes from the prison van, he spies on his ex-fiancée having coffee with another man at an outdoor restaurant, then follows her home and accuses her of cheating on him. They argue, and let's just say it doesn't end well. For her.
Meanwhile, Terri is a stay-at-home mother, and her husband is leaving on a trip to visit his father, so Terri sets up a "girls night" with her best friend, she needs someone to talk to because taking care of their two kids is a full-time job, and her marriage isn't doing so well. But these two people are on a collision course, because the murderer on the run crashes his stolen car near her house during a violent rain storm. He rings her doorbell to ask to borrow her phone, and at first she follows the rules of "stranger danger", she doesn't let him in the house, she makes him call for a tow truck while outside, but then over the course of five minutes she comes to trust him, and all that safety crap goes out the window. She lets him in the house, what could POSSIBLY go wrong?
Terri's friend Meg comes over, there's a lot of flirting going on, Meg is attracted to Colin but also assumes that he and Terri are having an affair. Remember, Colin is very charismatic and persuasive, but also a liar. And capable of violence, so this whole middle part is like waiting for the other shoe to drop - we know something bad's going to happen, but we don't know what, or when. Eventually something's bound to set off this guy, he's just wound WAY too tight to get out of this situation without blowing his top or just asserting his macho male dominance over these women in some way. Yep, there it is. You can play a version of "Clue" with this one, take bets on whether it's going to be Colin in the bedroom with a gun or Colin in the garage with a knife, but you know it's going to be Colin hurting someone in some room.
Colin's cut the phone lines, he's stashed all the kitchen knives, he's mapped out all the exits, he may be psychotic but he's no dope. Terri fights back with a fire extinguisher and tries to call for help with her fax machine (who still had a FAX MACHINE in 2014?) but this only forces Colin to make her pack up both kids and hit the road with him in the family car. They get pulled over by a white cop and Terri does her best to signal the cop that something hinky is going on, but with her kids in the car, she can't put their safety at risk by blowing his cover. Yeah, that situation doesn't end well, either.
Finally there's a bit of a contrivance, as Colin takes Terri back to the ex-fiancée's place, and well, no spoilers here. It seemed like a very wild coincidence, though, but upon further reflection maybe it all makes some sense. There's a final showdown which is a bit too much like "Fatal Attraction" only gender-reversed, and it really shouldn't be that at all, if you think about it. But I'll try not to, there's not much here that's really memorable so I expect I'll forget all about it in a few months.
NITPICK POINT: It seems a bit odd that a man with a murder conviction could escape from custody and then NOT be the top news story, with bulletins everywhere about the man on the loose. OK, maybe the storm was a hurricane or something and therefore it wasn't the top news story, everybody was a little busy, let's say. But with so many tabloid shows out there ("Inside Edition", "Extra", FOX News) you'd think that this story would still dominate the headlines. Remember those two guys who escaped from a prison in upstate New York a few years ago? The story hit the news right away and it dominated the headlines until they were caught.
Also starring Idris Elba (last seen in "Extraction II"), Leslie Bibb (last seen in "Running with the Devil"), Kate del Castillo (last seen in "Bad Boys for Life"), Henry Simmons (last seen in "World's Greatest Dad"), Mirage Moonschein, Kenny Alfonso (last seen in "Finding Steve McQueen"), Tatom Pender (last seen in "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks"), Kelly O'Neal (last seen in "I, Tonya"), Mark Rhino Smith (last seen in "Acts of Vengeance"), Bobbie Elzey, Leon Lamar (last seen in "They Cloned Tyrone"), Frank Brennan (last seen in "42"), Wilbur Fitzgerald (last seen in "One Missed Call"), Dolan Wilson (last seen in "The Best of Enemies"), Brianna Slate.
RATING: 5 out of 10 hastily-packed suitcases
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