Initially, the plot of the film is quite attractive as an acute psychological thriller, telling about a wealthy couple who, resting and doing business in Mexico, knocks down a person there on the road. He's got a police badge on his chest, and the local authorities won't pat the gringos on the head for that. Only he's already dead, and the wife behind the wheel is pregnant, and who's better off confessing? The most sensible way out will be to rush into the dark night, to return to America, to continue the old life, to have a child. However, having come to terms with the confluence of circumstances, gradually getting back on track, our heroes meet on the threshold of their home a mysterious man who turned out to be a blackmailer.
Genre problems hold the audience’s attention from the very beginning, because the conditions of history are ordinary and its laws are real, which has always been a good help to fascinating action-packed pictures, where the course of things moves so close to our real reality. The couple’s motives are well understood, their fear is palpable. Behavior is also not in doubt when there is a desire to get even with a witness of their act, showing the power of money, intimidating legally at a reception with a personal lawyer, and then simply paying off. Whip and carrot. But we all know that once you show a weakness to such people, you will have to prepare the neck where they sit and hang their legs. However, the authors intensify the conflict, playing on the psychological component, when the blackmailer’s money is not interested, and all his efforts are aimed at savoring his own power with maniacal pleasure to penetrate into someone else’s family, manage their fear, see their eyes turned down, suppress morally, seizing an ever greater piece of significance over the hostages of the situation.
The performer of the role of the antagonist Rutger Hauer (Rutger Hauer) with knowledge tries on sinister roles, because the “fellow traveler” he is a noble, able to portray mysterious types with sadistic inclinations. He has texture and charisma for a lunatic with a dead grip of a crocodile. His opponent Ron Silver (Ron Silver) with his on-screen wife Rebecca De Mornay (Rebecca De Mornay) equally harmoniously close the symbiotic triangle of relationships from the villain, obsessed with the desire to terrorize the chosen victims in the form of a raised confused man and a frightened attractive woman, forced to rely only on themselves in a deliberately losing position.
But, despite all the plot potential and a decent cast, diligently working in the right direction, the director does not carry a clear beginning from an intriguing plot to a confused apogee. Closer to the climax, the story begins to stall due to excessive exaggeration of the villain’s image. It is always an important foundation in such scenarios. There are tapes in the genre of a similar plot, when an imperious malevolent type penetrates into a prosperous family microcosm, playing on nerves. There are many of them, and one of the most revealing will be the classic Cape Fear, including a talented remake. There, all the scoundrel motives are clear without complaints, so everything else without problems builds up from above, giving a powerful impetus to positive characters. Here the author – by the way, not the most outstanding, often responsible for staging sequels – simply makes “oil oil”, sculpting the villain a villain without halftones or a clear logical chain, reaching extremes, rolling even into gaggy colors, inappropriately folding into ... western! In that same road nightmare movie, the negative type didn’t need anything more, like a collective image of all the maniac fellow travelers living in the dusty, empty backyards of the freeway, where you could shoot loudly and riot. And here is a psychological thriller, whose savor does not specifically remove the heroes from a full-bodied society, so that the realism of blackmail feels cozy for the benefit of the vicious circle of its hostages, who are cunningly terrorized, but they cannot turn to the authorities or neighbors, which is within easy reach of the outstretched arm, in order to explore the quiet horror in the most literal sense of the word.
As a result, it turns out that the film is difficult to attribute to impeccable productions due to the presence of a little bloated apogee, but it is laudable and for the format of a television thriller looks quite entertaining, brightening up the viewer a legitimate hour and a half at the screen.
6 out of 10