Benefit of the Doubt Reviews

Like the charming and clever Fox Network telemovie, directed by Jack Sholder (THE HIDDEN) based on his Oscar-nominated short 12:01 PM, Jonathan Heap's theatrical directing debut puts a new spin on an overused premise. But in this case it's not new enough. Despite a strong cast and the ever-evocative American Southwest setting, BENEFIT merely puts country-and-western garb on a resolutely routine lady-in-distress thriller. In her first major theatrical role since 1990's SHOW OF FORCE, Amy Irving is at first virtually unrecognizable as hard-bitten single-mom waitress Karen, supporting herself and her son by waitressing at a topless bar on the dusty outskirts of Cottonwood, Arizona. 22 years earlier, her childhood testimony was the sole evidence used to send her father Frank to prison for the murder of her mother. As the film begins, Frank (Donald Sutherland) charms the parole board into letting him loose, ironically citing his daughter's need for a father figure to help her get her life back into shape. Returning to his home town, Frank insinuates himself into the lives of Karen's son Pete (Rider Strong) and her boyfriend Dan (Christopher McDonald). When she confronts Frank, however, he manages to charm her as well and convinces her that her mother's death was accidental. Frank then systematically begins cutting her off from her friends and taking over her life. His murderous streak finally surfaces when Dan announces to Frank his intention to marry Karen. Frank kills Dan and makes it look like an accident, arousing the suspicions of local sheriff Calhoun (Graham Greene). Following Dan's funeral, Frank tries to sexually molest Karen in her sleep. However, she wakes up and recalls that her mother's death followed a similar incident when Karen was a child. Karen and Pete flee to a friend's houseboat in Lake Powell, hotly pursued by Frank, who is in turn pursued by Calhoun. Frank kills Calhoun and a security guard at the lake resort before catching up with Karen. But she escapes and leads Frank on a powerboat chase through the lake's canyon coves and inlets before an inevitable final confrontation ends in Frank's death. For a film that might usually be described as a "moody thriller," what is curious about BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT is how it fails to build any kind of mood around its primal conflicts-to-the-death. The actors do what they can. Irving steers clear of mannerisms early on, bringing an edgy and earthy believability to her hard-living, hard-loving single mom in miniskirts and boots. When the going gets rough, she also credibly underplays her rising wave of hysteria when confronted by her disturbing past, consistent with a woman who is not easily shocked. Underplaying is also Sutherland's strong suit. Rather than eye-popping excess, he opts for the steely-calm seductiveness of the practiced child molester and the cool remorselessness of the career serial killer in etching Frank. Greene, unfortunately, seems wasted in a one-note role, as is Theodore Bikel, appearing effectively though too briefly in a single scene as the D.A. who put Frank away. All are let down by a surprisingly perfunctory script that fails to develop any emotional depth within or between individual characters, which are developed only so far as to serve the mechanics of the plot. Perhaps Heap's greatest miscalculation is underusing the film's country-and-western setting, unusual for a contemporary thriller but rendered here without any life or dimension. He doesn't seem to have any genuine feeling for the milieu, appearing to use it only as a simple twist on the formula yuppie urban psycho-thriller genre, though even the requisite cheap thrills are in short supply here, while his action sequences are confused and plodding. As a result, BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT ends up a run-of-the-mill melodrama that easily could have been more.(Adult situations, violence.)