Saturday, August 25, 2012

Stealing Paradise



Runtime: 90 some odd minutes

Directed by: Tristan Dubois

Starring: Rachael Leigh Cook, Graham Abbey, Paula Jean Hixson, Neil Napier

From: Incendo Productions

How did I spend my Friday night tonight? Why, drinking several alcohol beverages at home while watching a TV movie from Canada that debuted up there last year (and was made in '10) and tonight made its American debut... on the Lifetime Movie Network. Yes, I watched a fillm on that channel, and yes it was for its lead. It was a movie I had known about before while going through her filmography and I knew its origins. I just had no idea when it would be shown in the United States. It turns out, last night I found out it was making its debut tonight. I am glad I did find that out; I would have been pissed if I had missed it.

In this movie set in Boston but filmed in Montreal, Amanda Collier (Rachael) is an MIT genius who graduated with honors in aeronautical engineering (shamefully, even I have to laugh at that) and is working on a big design breakthrough. It gets stolen by a co-worker and he claims it as his own. She gets pissed and she and her lawyer brother (Abbey) fight to get credit for it. The co-worker gets murdered and it's made to look like Amanda was the one who did the killing. Her and her brother try to defend themselves, while some other people get off'ed...

There are various twists and turns in this murder mystery. And no the final twist isn't that it was actually Amanda who does all the killings. I won't spoil it any further in case you want to check this out sometime in the future. It's basically Rachael and a bunch of random Canucks, but everyone at least delivers a fine performance and the filmmaking is satisfactory. It's nothing spectacular but it certainly isn't awful; it was perfectly acceptable (and more) for a TV movie and if you enjoy oogling and goggling at the lead then you might want to check this out, as it's a fine way to spend a random afternoon or evening... and she does look pretty hot.

And no I have no idea if the big design improvement presented in the film is possible or if it's just poppycock. It doesn't really matter. Also, I can't really explain the title of this motion picture. The apparent French title listed on its IMDb page, La Bataille d'Amanda, makes just about as much sense.

I'll be back Tuesday night.

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