I got this in a 2 disc set with 'Hercules in New York', and it spent 4 years gathering dust before I finally sat and watched this. I should have guessed that the B movie to Hercules wouldn't be worth the time.
To be fair, the production and acting aren't bad. It's on par with a made-for-TV movie, the main characters played their parts well and I understood what was going on, so I went into this movie open-minded. The main problem with the film is there's not enough story to last the length of a feature length movie. The murder and apprehension are covered in the first ten minutes, then the rest of it is boring retread as we go over a lot of unnecessary detail. We start off with Rod confessing to the murder, then going over the details of what led up to the murder in a police interview. A lot of other minor details are revealed over the course of the movie, but it's boring because we already know the ending. I repeatedly checked the run time during this to see how much longer this was going to go. I think the movie would have held my interest if it hadn't been told in flashback. It robs the movie of all immediacy and basically tells you 'Here's the story in ten minutes, now sit on your hands while we drag this out'. Obviously because this based on a true story you weren't going to get a twist ending, so it's just dull.
I'm not giving this lower than a 3 because it was competently shot, well acted and well produced. But the nothing of a plot and tedious pacing drag this down from being an okay movie to a bad one for me.
To be fair, the production and acting aren't bad. It's on par with a made-for-TV movie, the main characters played their parts well and I understood what was going on, so I went into this movie open-minded. The main problem with the film is there's not enough story to last the length of a feature length movie. The murder and apprehension are covered in the first ten minutes, then the rest of it is boring retread as we go over a lot of unnecessary detail. We start off with Rod confessing to the murder, then going over the details of what led up to the murder in a police interview. A lot of other minor details are revealed over the course of the movie, but it's boring because we already know the ending. I repeatedly checked the run time during this to see how much longer this was going to go. I think the movie would have held my interest if it hadn't been told in flashback. It robs the movie of all immediacy and basically tells you 'Here's the story in ten minutes, now sit on your hands while we drag this out'. Obviously because this based on a true story you weren't going to get a twist ending, so it's just dull.
I'm not giving this lower than a 3 because it was competently shot, well acted and well produced. But the nothing of a plot and tedious pacing drag this down from being an okay movie to a bad one for me.