A man and his mistress plan the murder of his wife. When the wrong woman is murdered everything in their lives spiral out of control.
The Lowdown
Davis Meyers (Bill Sage) is married to a very uptight woman named Janice (Noelle Beck). While Davis enjoys the small town atmosphere and comfort of their Hampton home, she wants more. He is willing to eat at the corner burger joint while she prefers a comfortable sit down restaurant. This separation of values is shown early when we first meet Davis who shows a great love for kids while Janice explains how having children is a complete waste of time.
Luckily, he has a mistress who shares his love for the small town life as well. Unfortunately, his affair is discovered by his wife thanks to the unlikely stroke of bad luck of her finding an earring in her shoe. His wife, a real go-getter holds the upper hand in this separation as she has the desire and drive while Davis is a bull shitter who only seems to be chasing the next easy score.
The acting in this movie is atrocious. The lead Bill Sage is one of the worst of the bunch that includes only one decent actor, Roy Scheider. Scheider is left quoting such bad dialogue that he can’t even help the script rise above its pedestrian levels. The music is repetitive and the editing is amateurish. There is practically nothing redeeming about the making of this movie. The plot twists around when Davis and his mistress Hadley (Susan Misner) decide to kill his wife but accidentally shoots and kills the maid Maria (Mirelly Taylor) instead.
Scheider is Linus, the police officer investigating the murder, and I couldn’t help but notice of how old he was looking in this movie. The movie was shot in 2005, three years before Scheider’s death.
One funny item to note is the attitude of Janice following the murder. Despite the fact she was the target of the murder, she becomes the one wanting to keep quiet and not share any evidence due to people always getting blamed for things they didn’t do. Following the murder, she grows closer to Davis and actually changes her stance on having a baby with him. Meanwhile, Hadley is feeling the guilt of the crime and finds herself shut out of Taylor’s life despite doing what she felt she needed to do to secure their relationship. They decide to sell their home and ironically the realtor they choose to grow through is Hadley herself. The ironies in this movie are a bit too farfetched to take seriously.
The movie wants to be a Noir but it remains completely uninteresting. Davis is one of the most uninteresting characters in recent memory and the poor acting still holds it down. Hadley plays the role of the femme fatale to great aplomb, possibly the only character who is written well. Despite her role in the film everything else just bores me to tears as I found myself waiting for something to happen. And waiting. And waiting. And waiting. Everything in the movie is just planned out too well and even when the obvious happens and everyone’s lives spirals down the toilet, it is too little and too late to save this movie.
The Package
Interviews: This is a group of interviews with Susan Misner (14:17), Noelle Beck (07:50), Bill Sage (16:57) and the directors Benjamin and Orson Cummings (13:35). It is a mixture of the people talking about the film and about their own careers. A small note, when watching the interviews I see a bit a physical attributes of Julia Roberts in Beck and a bit of Gary Busey in Sage.
Behind-the-Scenes Footage (1:18:49): This behind the scenes feature is longer than the movie itself. The feature follows the filmmaking cast and crew as they make the movie day by day. They talk to everyone they can about everything including acting, makeup work, effects and directing the movie. It is a pretty comprehensive look at the making of the scenes and is better than the movie itself. It is not polished by any means but remains an honest look at the difficulties of independent filmmaking.