A Vow to Kill Reviews

Rich women in thrillers should always hire private investigators when they think they've found their perfect mate. As an example of the pampered-woman-in-peril subgenre (e.g. MIDNIGHT LACE, SORRY WRONG NUMBER), A VOW TO KILL suffers from deadly scripting, vapid performances, and a miserly attitude which skimps on production values as well as melodrama. A lady-in-distress thriller without non-stop costume changes is a contradiction in terms. After the death of her cherished spouse, Michael (Ron Van Hart), in a car accident, do-gooder socialite Rachel Waring (Julianne Phillips) accelerates her healing process by becoming involved with freelance photographer Eric Russo (Richard Grieco), who behaves like the archetypal sensitive male. In short order, Rachel marries Eric. On their honeymoon, Eric coaxes Rachel to pose for bondage photos as a lark. However, the snapshots serve a darker purpose: Eric uses them to pull a scam on Rachel's mogul papa Frank Waring (Gordon Pinsent). Eric pretends that he and Rachel have been kidnapped and, in the guise of the kidnapper, demands ten million in ransom. Teaming up with a private eye, Sam Flowers (Peter MacNeill), to locate the couple, Waring proves no match for Eric and his real wife Linda (Nicole Oliver). Eric and Linda try to up the stakes by sending Waring a phony photo of a murdered Eric, with the implication being that Rachel is next. Growing increasingly suspicious of Eric's absences (during which, he claims, he's immersed in wildlife photo-shoots), Rachel tracks him to a cabin where she uncovers the kidnapping hoax. In the meantime, detective Flowers has located Rachel (through a forestry code on Eric's faked hanging photo), but is stabbed to death after a confrontation with Eric. Fleeing the rampaging Eric, Rachel heads for a motorboat. Avenging herself on two counts--since Eric was also responsible for rigging the car accident that killed Rachel's first husband--Rachel gets an instant divorce by speedboating over Eric in reverse. While the heroine of A VOW TO KILL is jeopardized by her trusting heart, the audience is in peril of perishing from boredom right from the get-go. Decades seem to pass before Eric wines and dines his gullible mark into marriage; a montage would have sufficed. Cross-cutting between Rachel's risky period of adjustment and some routine detective work, the film's suspense level never reaches a fever pitch. Somehow, it's a suspense-genre rule that wealthy women who legitimize their sexual slumming with marriage must be punished for betraying their class. But here, the inadequate performances from Grieco and Phillips ensure that the audience can't even get off on the subtext of sexual hysteria normally inherent in this kind of marital horror story.(Graphic violence, sexual situations, profanity.)