User Reviews

!!!! SPOILERS !!!!

A hot shot lawyer called Callum Crane rapes Sophie his new secetary . Nathan Corrigan a newly paroled prisoner is released and tracks down his father . Just missing him at the law firm he literally bumps into Tanya who takes a fancy to him and invites him back to her flat where her flatmate is Sophie rape victim . Nathan eventually meets his father who is being black mailed . Nathan`s father doesn`t know Nathan is his son but hires him to kill the black mailer who is Sophie rape victim . Did I mention Nathan`s dad is Callum Crane ?

Man I could be here all night explaining all the intricate plot twists and the quite ridiculous coincidences involving this thriller . But I won`t put the boot into it since it might give the impression that I detested THE GUILTY . I didn`t detest it . It`s a rather enjoyable thriller but I can`t ignore the fact that there`s far too much coincidence involved . For example character A always happens to be walking down the right street so they can bump into character B which pushes the plot along , or character C will fail to open an envelope that would have saved character D`s life , and you can`t help noticing the blatent plot hole that Sophie wouldn`t be able to make the rape allegation stick since there`s no forensic evidence after several days and that she has a motive for blackening Crane`s name . The script - Via Crane - actually points this out

It`s this clumsy writing that stops THE GUILTY from being far more highly regarded . I notice that the IMDB voters have given it an average in the region of 6.3 and this is probably the correct score . If you`re the sort of person who endlessly anylizes movies you`ll find much to criticise but you`ll probably still be entertained . If there`s nothing on television and you`re just looking for a thriller to pass a couple of hours before you go to bed I can certainly recommend THE GUILTY

Outside of a soap opera, what are the odds of someone unknowingly hiring his own son (whose existence he didn't know) to kill a girl with whom, coincidentally and also unknowingly, the son is temporarily living? What are the odds that son will have a criminal record, and also will have a friend who is being persecuted by thugs and who would be ready to do the job the son refuses to do? There are more implausible coincidences in this hyper-convoluted and hyper-far-fetched plot, but these should prove the point.

Characters are not only extremely improbable, but they also do not behave in a rational, intelligent way. A senior lawyer is manipulated like a boob to fire a girl on the flimsiest of reasons (with no cause, in fact). As his only leverage, the son has an envelope with evidence to incriminate the father, but instead of hiding it he goes to sleep, so the father easily grabs the envelope. Mysteriously, this same father -to demonstrate that he is as idiotic as his son- does not destroy the incriminating envelope immediately. Later, being interrupted by his wife when he is finally going to burn it, he exits the house just leaving the envelope on a table (!). Not only that, but days pass without him even remembering about the envelope. So too late he learns that, in the middle of a marital crisis, the wife (apparently also unknowingly) had sent the envelope to the District Attorney.

The son goes to the girl's house to prevent her from being murdered, but he botches his speech to such a degree that she expels him from the apartment and he is unable to stop the killer. Generally speaking, characters seem unable to convey information in a clear way, even on essential matters; misinterpretations abound. Too much suspense is built around these confusions and these unnatural behaviors.

The title of this film implies that that there will be moral considerations raised about the subject of guilt. It turns out that there will be an abundance of guilty people in constant interaction during this two-hour drama.

At the center of the story is a sleazy attorney, Callum Crane, who becomes a judge after committing a heinous act of assault of a young staff member in his law office. The balance of the film is a desperate effort on the part of the judge to eliminate all of the incriminating evidence and to silence the woman he abused when she attempts to blackmail him. Part of his master plan is murder.

The screenplay for "The Guilty" is a nonstop string of coincidences that bring together various subplots: (1) Crane's response to a blackmail threat from his victim, Sophie Lennon; (2) the untoward circumstances of the long-lost son of Crane, Nathan Corrigan, who has started a relationship with Sophie and has been hired by his father to kill her; (3) an adulterous affair that is taking place behind Crane's back with his wife and another attorney; and (4) an unsavory group of criminals who enter into the mix, due to Nathan's association with a young thug named Leo.

Bill Pulman's interpretation of the character of Callum Crane has far too much sympathy because too often he seems like a really nice guy. We see the conscience of Crane as he attempts to redeem himself after he has reached a point of no return. Likewise, Crane's bastard son was far too sensitive, decent, and honest to have ever spent time in prison for auto theft or to have become enmeshed with a troubled soul like Leo. The father and the son were simply too likable.

Despite the film's shortcomings, there were many creative touches in the multi-layered narrative. Hardly a minute goes by without some indication of the main emotional theme: guilt.

Bill Pullman is a good actor, and most of the other actors in the film did well, too. But it was to unbelievable, too full of coincidences, too full of unimaginative dialog ("Do you always attack people in garages" when Bill's life had probably just been saved by the guy). And Leo was not believable, nor were the three guys who killed Leo, they were just the dumbest sort of stereotypes. Even a basic anchor of the plot, the Bill would kill to be a judge and give up a million dollars a year for a couple hundred thousand, wasn't believable. I never suspended my disbelief and that's the problem with this film. Okay, one more line: the blonde roommate was just too stupid for words, and the way they both flirted with Bill's son was too cute for words.

The Guilty isn't great, but it ain't bad either, it holds the attention. It has a "Melrose Place" seedy vibe, where everybody's up to no good.

Pullman has both the sleazeball and the president in his wheelhouse. Gabrielle Anwar's absurdly beautiful, her character didn't have to do any of these things though, the situation's messily undefined and overblown, nor did Crane need fire her. Sawa plays the main character, who oddly feels out of place in this setting. Why he throws the money in the sewer after accepting it in person makes no sense, plus the fact that it's his father's money. Byers from "The X-Files," along with others who have guest appeared on the show briefly seen here.

Let me first of all cast a vote against the title. I particularly dislike titling stories by just adding "The" before a relevant words. Horror novels are particularly prone to this, and I think, "So you couldn't think of a proper title, then?" For the most part, this is a moderately predictable suspense thriller, though it has one or two moments which are a little unexpected. Spoiler: the fact that Sophie is, indeed, murdered surprised me. I expected her to be rescued. And the final denouement is nicely realised: the kicker is fairly given away early, but nicely hidden/forgotten until the last moment. All of this was satisfying.

The thing that bugged me were the coincidences, principally that Nathan a) was Calum's son and b) already knew Sophie when Calum recruited him into the plot to murder her. The story would have worked just as well (subject to only minor rewriting), and would have been more credible, if neither of these coincidences had been present.

Oh well. It passed a couple of hours satisfactorily.

**SPOILERS** Extremely over-plotted made for TV movie that has at least a half dozen different storyline running concurrently through it at the same time.

There's young and troubled Nate Corrigan, Devon Sawa, who' looking to turn his life around after serving six month behind bars on a stolen car conviction. There's also Nate's two muddled headed and criminally prone friends Leo & Dennis, Jaimz Wolvett & Darcy Belsher who are about the last people that Nate, being on parole, should associate with. It's these two noodnicks who pick Nate up from prison in a stolen SUV and almost end up getting killed in a wild ride where they almost ends up killing a number of carnival security guards who try to stop them from demolishing the place.

The major plot in the film is the connection that Nate has with sleazy and oily defense lawyer Callum Crane, Bill Pullman. It's Crane who it turns out, through his birth certificate, is Nate's biological father. The father Nate never knew he had! It also turns out that Crane is somewhat of a ladies man cheating on his wife Natalie, Joanne Whalley, who in return is cheating on him by having an affair with Crane's law partner Brent Frazer, Kent Thembleh. The thing that really gets the movie, with all the confusion in it, going is Crane's rape of his first day on the job secretary Sophie Lennon, Gabrielle Anwar. Having Sophie fired from her job to keep her from giving him any trouble the very smart Crane showed just what an ignorant and overconfident jerk, despite his perfect recored as a defense attorney, he really is.

It was Sophie on learning that her hot in the pants and unethical lawyer ex-boss was appointed to be a respected Federal Court Judge where he's sit and pass down judgment on rapists like himself that she started blackmailing him to either resign his post or she'll, by revealing just what a sleaze-ball he is, force him to do it. What in fact ties the Crane Sophie entanglement together in the movie is that Crane's illegitimate son Nate is also Sophie's roommate! Now how's that for a coincidence!

Believe or not all this is just half of what's going on in the movie "The Guilty" the other half has to do with Crane trying to get Sophie knocked off by non-other then his, whom he at the time doesn't realize, son Nate! Nate not willing to do the job, he doesn't even ask his old man whom he's supposed to knock off, which has his good friend Leo, who's in debt to a gang of murderous bikers, do the hit-job instead.

***SPOILER ALERT*** The last fifteen minutes of the film is packed with so many twists and turns that your left feeling dizzy just trying to follow it. When you and Crane finally get the pay-off to what the movie's ending is really all about you by then have been left so mind numbed and psychically exhausted that it takes you a while to figure just what the big surprise ending is really all about!

The plot has been summarised well already. In one week, an ex-con Sawa is told who his real father is, so he goes to find him, and meets a girl who is roommates with the woman his biological father just raped. Sawa meets his father and doesn't tell him he's his bio son before his father Pullman gives him a load of cash to kill off the rape victim. Unfortunately Sawa doesn't even open the envelope that has her name, address, picture and $5000. His ex-con friend gets the envelope and goes off and kills her. And then, blah blah blah.

The story is incomprehensible. The characters don't act like normal people. The plot is so twisted and convoluted. I like a good thriller with twists, but this was absurd.

I did make it to the end, only to scream at the screen. Pullman almost got away with it all, but for some unexplainable reason he leaves an addressed letter to the police containing the evidence he hired the killer on his desk that his wife mails. So stupid.

It was interesting to watch, but the end was a total letdown.

Callum Crane, a powerful lawyer, is seen in his summation on a case being tried for defamation of character. He has even orchestrated the right moment in which a ray of sun will shine on the defendant's face to dramatize the occasion, while fumbling on a Shakespeare quote. He is too theatrical to lose the case. His own take on the two million dollars awarded the offended party is probably half of it.

Crane believes he can have Sophie Lennon, an attractive young woman who works in his office, just after he had been toasted by the partners. It was the wrong move because Sophie did not have any intentions to have sex with the powerful head of the lawyers' firm. Callum has no idea the humiliation he provokes in the young woman he decided to rape against her wish.

Nathan Corrigan just recently out of jail for a car theft, returns to town hoping to go straight. His pals have another thing in mind. He receives a blow when he learns Callum is his father. Going to meet him, he runs into Sophie, with whom he likes from the start. Callum, who is not aware of the relationship, sees in the young man a powerful ally for what he wants to do when Sophie becomes his bitter enemy. Nathan becomes the instrument of Callum's wish to get Sophie out of the picture, something that backfires.

"The Guilty" a 2001 film directed by Anthony Waller is a film that seems to have gone to video, or did not get a commercial distribution. Written by Simon Burke for a television movie, it was adapted by William Davies for this new production shot entirely around Vancouver. The film has good moments, but the plot does not hold its momentum because its so many twists and turns. There are too many things that do not completely make sense, especially between Callum and Nathan, or for that matter, the nomination of Callum to a Supreme Court seat (state, that is, not federal) is too much to be believed, when as a star lawyer, Crane can name his price for any case he would decide to take.

There are other plot holes that leave the viewer scratching his head, but one gives it the benefit of the doubt. There are other aspects that work. The sinister character of Callum is one of the creepiest characters Bill Pullman, a good actor, has been asked to bring to life. Gabrielle Anwar shows up as Sophie, the violated young woman who vows revenge on the powerful Callum. Davon Sawa appears as Nathan. The wonderful Joanne Whalley has nothing to do as the two-timing wife of Callum.