Reviews

A fascinating story indeed, although autobiographies make me suspicious since they always leave me wondering what was deliberately left out. Only biographers with ruthless perseverance are capable of revealing the more intriguing and sometimes embarrassing details of a person's life.

Note that Mr. Lazenby doesn't mention his parents who would surely have been an influence on his character development later in life.

That older women were attracted to him at an early age because of his looks and brashness would certainly have ingrained in him an almost omniscient ego--not to mention an unrestrained libido--thereby handing him a sense of confidence unavailable to most men.

Unhappy in school as a youth and subsequently with his jobs as car mechanic, car salesman, male model, etc., clearly indicates that Lazenby was someone perpetually restless, always seeking something better in life but being unable to make firm commitments--even with Belinda, the woman he claimed he truly loved.

Therefore despite his incredible luck in landing the James Bond role, Lazenby clearly felt uncomfortable signing a contract for 6 films. His inner voice insisted that he remain "his own man" no matter the potential consequences, and he must be commended for sticking to his principles.

Fame and fortune can--and does--destroy many who launch themselves into the unknown.

I trust that Lazenby will remain at peace with the choices he made and wish him all the best.

No need for me to write a plot synopsis here since other commenters have already done it, so I'll focus my rant upon the appalling acting and a few of the glaring plot holes--of which there were too many to count.

Most annoying in my opinion was David, the teenage boy played by Eric Foster who must have been dragged out his high school drama class a day prior to being cast in this dismal film.

Throughout most of the film, the kid remained wide-eyed and strangely mute but with his mouth agape throughout (just like you see in his IMDb photo). I kept hoping that a fly would zip inside to make him gag.

Then, there was David's pretty sister Lynn (Kim Valentine) who, incredibly, didn't seem to mind the attention of the local, conceited slob Kenny (Michael Robinson) whom wiser girls would have avoided like the plague and whose only "claim to fame" could only have been his pristine, 2-door 1959 Chevy.

As for grandma, grandpa, those yakking visitors stuffing their faces, the dumb-ass sheriff, etc., made me groan, "No...no...NOT THESE stereotypes, please!".

Strange, too, that the wacko, presumably mentally-challenged mother of the teenagers always seemed energetic and savvy enough to be able to chase and catch up to the fleeing kids no matter how fast they ran, no matter where they tried to hide, etc., plus the fact that David and Lynn couldn't seem to realize the folly of running directly in front of the pickup truck wacko mother evidently had no trouble handling Why didn't the kids simply jump behind the adjacent trees and dash away in the opposite direction?

But then, what can we expect from turkeys like this?

Ridiculous, if slightly charming, French farce about the unlikely "relationship" between Helena, a self-indulgent call girl bored with the usual Johns she is expected to entertain, and horny 15-year-old Julien who, despite not being completely sure of himself, nevertheless ends up obsessed with her. Inevitably, complications arise.

Overly-tight editing speeds the screenplay along in rapid-fire fashion, shoving each scenario at the viewer's face much too quickly to be plausible, particularly the unrealistic back-and-forth dialog between the boy and his father. Do French dads really openly chuckle at their teenage sons' high-octane libidos under such risky circumstances? I highly doubt it.

Mimsy Farmer looks fetching enough here but certainly not drop-dead gorgeous as she does in other films she has appeared in.

Eva Ionescu in her small, inconsequential part is definitely not "beautiful" here at all with her unflattering, ratty-looking "hairstyle" (?) and bland, unsmiling face throughout. Furthermore, she doesn't even get to say or do much to contribute to the overall plot.

As for Julien's excruciatingly vain and bullying "pal" Capo, I wanted to throttle the jerk with his smug dialog and truly obnoxious, grope-and-grab behaviour towards females. I kept hoping that at some point he'd get a severe comeuppance, but unfortunately that never happened.

I couldn't buy Madame Josee's nonchalant attitude toward Julien's underage status concerning his disruptive involvement with her cash-cow Helene. Are we to believe that Madame Josee would allow her OWN son (if indeed she even had one) to openly consort with a prostitute, thereby jeopardizing her lucrative, illegal business?

Finally, where is that school in Paris with its indoor windows that allow the girl students to peer directly into the boys shower room, enabling them to openly taunt them with impunity (although the boys didn't seem in the least bit unperturbed by it all)? Indeed, not even the teachers appear to be overly-concerned about this visual oversight (pun unintended).

While it was interesting to watch the character interplay, one needed to suspend ones disbelief pretty damn far to believe that ALL of those clearly affluent school kids who clearly acted with a lot of impunity and who wore whatever they felt like (no uniforms) were "unhappy" with their lives and how they presumably hated their "predicament". But then, misery (real or imagined) loves company.

Sure, there are always a few misfits, bullies and their unfortunate bullied targets, obnoxious, disruptive "class clowns", those who are unable or unwilling to learn, hostile to school authority, and--saddest of all--the mentally ill and violent to a murderous extreme as had occurred at Columbine and elsewhere ever since.

Enter a presumably intelligent misfit with a pirate radio transmitter to deliberately stir up trouble and all hell breaks loose. Very unwise as it turned out.

It wasn't at all clear in the beginning of the film exactly how many students were wrongly or legitimately suspended or expelled from Hubert Humphrey High, but one would surely expect that the overseeing, educational authorities would have put a stop to a particular school's mismanagement if indeed there was a problem. Besides, parents would have been up in arms long before things got out of hand.

Viewers are expected to swallow that shock jock Mark Hunter in his "wisdom" had his finger placed precisely on the pulse of teenage angst when in reality it was not quite that simple considering the fact that there were hundreds of students attending there from all walks of life, cultural differences, and so on.

Furthermore, to believe that his agitating and foul-mouthed outbursts over the airwaves would not have been discovered early on by his parents or be tolerated for as long as they were by the school and the FCC (who, by the way, would have shut him down within days and certainly not weeks) is quite a stretch.

The FCC would never use such ridiculously visible yellow vans to track down Mark's pirate station. A Reddit website blog shows what a REAL such van would look like.

Incidentally, low power broadcasting is actually permitted under certain FCC rules and regs, so Mark would only have needed to transmit far enough to cover his local school and immediate neighbourhood and not for many miles around as is definitely prohibited.

A Google Search reveals much information on this topic, so kids...please read the fine print and get the facts in writing from the FCC before setting up your broadcasting station, or better still, run a podcast or personal webpage.

Steiger has never let me down as an actor. Always intense and rivetting, he shines in Wolf Lake.

As far as the plot goes, however, you have to wonder why Huffman would let slip to ANYONE that he had been a deserter, let alone to the confrontational, hard-as-nails Steiger.

Furthermore, I find it a stretch that Steiger's three buddies would have been as criminally compliant as they were made out to be. After all, they were no longer officially under his command from their presumed, mutual Vietnam stint.

Inexplicably, when Huffman and his girlfriend flee their cabin, he foolishly leaves his rifle behind while realizing Steiger and his cronies are in deadly pursuit. Only when Huffman and his girlfriend manage to double back, does he retrieve his gun.

If the film was indeed shot in Mexico as is claimed, why did the producers go to the trouble and expense of flying down that Cessna seaplane (Canadian registration number CF-TEQ) when they could easily have filmed in Canada?

I usually avoid films of this genre because they're so obviously pretentious, slap-dashed together with dumb plots, goofy dialog, and stupid jokes spoken by unrealistic people whom I could never identify with. How many viewers could, anyway?

Nevertheless, I made an exception with Skatetown U. S. A. As I only wanted to see what role perky Maureen McCormick would play following her long stint in The Brady Bunch TV series (which, by the way, I never watched either). I expected another Sally Field type, I suppose.

In Skatetown U. S. A., McCormick plays Susan, the presumed roller-skating partner of her brother Stan, played by Greg Bradford.

I say "presumed" because, oddly enough, Susan never actually accompanies Stan in any of the scheduled skating competitions whatsoever! Instead, despite the fact she's dressed up as a hottie-cutie-pie, she is inexplicably presented as overly-flirty, superficial eye-candy who, even more inexplicably, in the plot ends up supporting and aligning herself with the competing skating team, here played by Patrick Swayze and his crew. And, as if that's not bad enough, it even looks and sounds as if she's stoned in a scene where's she's sitting in a stolen car next to one of Swayze's toadies who she has somehow "fallen for".

I haven't read McCormick's autobiography yet, so I'll have to find out what, if anything, she has to say about Skatetown U. S. A.

More about the plot, why was it even necessary for Swayze to bully and threaten everyone (often with his switchblade knife!) when he was clearly shown to be the most talented skater? In fact, neither Stan nor any of the other contestants in the movie were that memorable to begin with.

I could be wrong, but I even have my doubts that Greg Bradford himself did any actual skating in the contest. Since he wore a white eye-mask and was in the distance, it could very well have been a body double performing. Furthermore, it's entirely possible that McCormick herself had little to no roller-skating talent, which would explain why her scenes were so minimal.

With Susan having irresponsibly disappeared from sight at the critical moment when Stan was required to perform with her as his registered skating partner, he ended up partnering instead with Swayze's sister (!), of all people--a situation that logically would have disqualified Stan as a contestant to begin with!

I'm not sure that a PG rating would make it acceptable for children. Since other commenters have pointed out various features of Skatetown U. S. A. That make one groan, I'll leave it here.

First of all, I wasn't fooled for a moment by the plot's suggestion that the caller and the woman living alone were supposedly strangers to each other. Their eye contact and body language gave them away, not to mention Malcom McDowell's immediate, overconfident attitude the moment Madolyn Smith Osborne first opened the door to him and how too gullibly she believed his story about his car breaking down. She didn't seem the least bit nervous as one would normally expect her to be.

The old, familiar movie plot of a stranger asking to come into someone's home to use their phone has been done so often you'd think people would have wised up by now, based on the horrific reality of well-publicized home invasions.

Why can't the homeowner simply say, "Just wait outside and I'll call the police (or towing company) for you."? Then make sure you lock the door!

Personally, if I ever needed to get help, I'd simply shout out to anyone within range, "Please call 9-1-1! It's an emergency!". No need for me to request entry into someone else's house, thereby giving them a reason to suspect any ulterior motive on my part. That being said, if someone offers to help me in other ways, that's perfectly fine, but that's THEIR call.

Regarding The Caller's plot: as the truly unlikely and increasingly bizarre dialog between the two "strangers" developed, I began to think that the REAL story might turn out to be either

(1) McDowell, was actually a director employing a rough, "hands on" test of hopeful actress Osborne for a film he was casting, or

(2) about an actual married couple engaging in a game of role-play whereby they pretend they don't know each other but want to have a bit of fun, so to speak, to relieve boredom.

There is a particular movie (the name of which escapes me for the moment) that I had once seen where the lovely Carol Lynley opens her door to a "salesman" who, however, she's well-aware is her boyfriend, after which she lets him in and the "so, what can I do for you?" game progresses or deteriorates accordingly.

I must admit, though, that the sci-fi ending to The Caller surprised me. Perhaps the writer and producer ran out of ideas and decided to toss this one at us like a hand grenade?

Spoilers

I saw this when it first aired in 1973 and never forgot it--and for one particularly significant reason: right near the end of the movie where just as the attack dog was about to clamp its jaws around James Brolin's face, there was a power failure in my neighbourhood! My TV went black, of course, and in my now-darkened living room I shouted, "Oh, NO! Holy ****!" or something similar. I kid you not. I couldn't believe it!

I then had to wait many months and perhaps even a year or more before "Trapped" was eventually rerun as a late night movie and I finally got to see the ending! I often wonder how many other TV viewers in my area had suffered the same initial frustration that night, and perhaps even missed the rerun!

As for the movie's plotline: it's hard to believe that any department store would actually employ guard dogs to protect their premises in this way as it seems to me that if such a perilous predicament ever actually occurred to someone unfortunate enough to be trapped inside, it could very likely result in serious injury or death (imagine the lawsuit!) unless they stayed put in a secure location until the store re-opened, which Brolin SHOULD have done rather than smash his way through the place, enraging the dogs even further.

Notwithstanding the fact that personal cellphones were nonexistent in the 1970s, was it (or is it still?) standard procedure to disable a multi-extension (Centrex) landline telephone system after a store has closed for the day?

What if a security guard service had been utilized instead of dogs? How would such a guard be able to phone outside to get help due to some health emergency of his other than to smash a window and set off one of the alarms? Even worse, what if a hapless victim had become locked in on a Saturday night with no chance of being saved until the following Monday?

Then there was Brolin's foolhardy attempt to shoot an arrow at the continually leaping, snarling dog. How could he be sure that he'd kill it or even manage to injure it significantly to thereby enable him in his already dazed and physically weakened state to climb down from his high ledge, hobble or drag himself to the department store's locked front doors and pray that someone passing by outside would notice his plight at 5 a.m.? Good luck, buddy!

Goof: perhaps it was the film editor's blunder, but although one of the muggers clearly steals the wristwatch from Brolin's left wrist, it then looks as if he also snatches ANOTHER wristwatch from Brolin's RIGHT wrist!

Granted, David Janssen was a good (but not great actor) and was memorable in his "Harry O" role, although evidently his previous, short-lived series "O'Hara, U. S. Treasury" didn't garner much praise or success (why the title similarities, I wonder?).

A few things that bugged me, however, was why the producers of "Harry O" believed that viewers would buy the notion that gorgeous twenty-somethings (including the awesome Farrah Fawcett, no less!) would find Harry's hang-dog, snarling, downbeat persona attractive in any way whatsoever.

C'mon, I mean, the man was twice their age, broke, drove a heap, rarely smiled, indeed never once laughed throughout the entire series that I remember! ("Sugar daddy?" Gimme a break!) Farrah (here playing a stewardess) ought to have stopped throwing herself at Harry, found herself a young, high-salaried pilot, and moved on to better things (which, presumably, she eventually did).

Then there was poor Henry Darrow (as Lieutenant Quinlan) who was unceremoniously killed off from the series and replaced by the mostly abrasive, annoying, and eternally sarcastic Anthony Zerbe as Lt. Trench. Zerbe, I think most will agree, was much better suited playing the criminals and other heavies he often did during his career.

No matter how often Harry's detective work and crime solving outshone the police in their investigations, Lt. Trench seemed determined to maintain an ungrateful, almost nasty attitude toward him that seemed to be beyond jealousy. I kept hoping that Harry would just once give Trench a verbal blast and even throw a punch at him once in a while, saying, "Look, Lieutenant...I solved the damn case...and YOU didn't!".

Finally, having Harry drive (or TRY to drive) a virtual wreck of a car became a ridiculous and even tiresome gimmick that was presumably only used to include his jive-talking, black mechanic in the cast--although I did consider him delightful as the comic relief.

Doesn't crime solving with its frequent live-and-death situations require you to have reliable mobility when you need to get from place to place in a hurry? Even Kolchak drove a well-maintained Mustang in his Night Stalker series, but then Lt. Frank Columbo drove a crappy car. Go figure!

David Janssen - R. I. P.

**Warning: Spoilers**

Ben Hardings (Frank Gorshin) and his wife Terry (Stephanie Powers) trick a county rescue Sheriff helicopter crew into airlifting them from a cliff-climbing mishap, after which they hijack the copter and crew, demand a measly $100,000, and that all nearby aircraft be grounded so they can make their getaway.

This was all a diversion, of course, since meanwhile the Hardings have engaged a team of co-conspirators to take over an air traffic control tower at gunpoint and transfer 10 million dollars worth of gold bricks from a plane onto a disguised Navy bus.

Somehow having managed to hoodwink the Sheriff Captain (Joseph Campanella) and his chatty, down-home-type team for a good hour and a half before they realize what has happened behind their collective backs, Ben, Terry, along with a few other co-conspirators take the bus into a warehouse garage, hose off the fake Navy logo and whitewash paint, and then drive as "inconspicuously" as possible (?) through city streets, traffic jams, and then along practically empty highways (in California yet!), while the Sheriff's crew and the FBI (who are never actually seen participating in the search) engage copters and planes on the lookout for the culprits.

Meanwhile, at a few points along the way, some of Ben and Terry's co-conspirators leave the bus with their share of the heavy loot and are never seen nor mentioned again in the film! Presumably, they have gotten clean away!

Ben, it turns out, is actually a city transit bus driver who has spent a year planning the gold heist despite the fact his adoring wife Terry wasn't too keen on the idea in the first place but, despite Ben's sleazy appearance and intimidating attitude toward her (that same old "gotta love a bad boy" syndrome that too many women fall into). Certainly, gorgeous Terry could have--should have--ended up with someone better than this, right?

Anyway, Ben's "brilliant" idea that a bus can easily elude the authorities on open roads and in broad daylight while, incidentally, also having managed to overpower and abduct an inquisitive motorcycle cop, is clearly stretching the notion of "the suspension of disbelief". I mean, you would think Ben and his crew would have abandoned the bus in that warehouse and then transferred the gold into a van? But no.

In the end, roadblocks and a Sheriff's helicopter crew manage to spot the bus. (Yay!) Ben then desperately attempts to use the motorcycle cop as a hostage and make his escape on foot (really?) while Terry finally comes to the realization that the caper was all for naught.

The movie closes with the Sheriff's team joking in their headquarter's office. All in a days work? Yee haw!

Somehow, I can't imagine Joseph Campanella wanting to play the lead in a possible series following this would-be pilot film, but what do I know? Maybe he needed the money.

Frank Gorshin should have kept his REAL job as a stand-up comic and not as a movie heavy).

As for beautiful Stephanie Powers? Glad she moved up to better things with Robert Wagner in Hart to Hart.

I have to say that "Mi Primer Pecado" (My First Sin) has to be the most annoying "coming of age" movies I've ever seen. If it was intended to successfully emulate the much superior 1971 film "Summer of '42", it failed miserably.

First of all, virtually throughout the entire film the young actor, Corro Martin Summers maintains an annoying, despondent facial expression (just as is shown on the VCR video box) regardless of who he is with or what he is doing--even when he finds himself in bed with Cristina, his dream fantasy woman who is ten years his senior. One wonders why the casting director could not have found a more competent and believable actor than Summers.

Only Curro's cohort pals manage to enliven the atmosphere somewhat with their juvenile pranks but nevertheless they cannot rescue this turkey by any means.

Beatriz Galbo who plays the prostitute Cristina is quite pretty, but the notion that she would actually become attracted to a clumsy, continually sullen-faced teenage boy like Curro is stretching the viewer's suspension of disbelief to the limit, to say the least.

Continuity and plot holes abound, particularly the scene where Cristina and her roommate (played by Maria Hevia) hustle the Corro into the Madrid nightclub where Cristina is employed as a dancer, past the previously vigilant, uniformed doorman-bouncer and where neither the barman nor any of the adult customers in the crowded place seem to care or even notice that the kid is clearly underage as well as ignoring the fact that he is being plied with cigarettes and booze to the point where he passes out in the men's room. No club manager ever shows up to put a stop to all of this the nonsense, either, so you wonder how long it will be before that nightclub will lose its licence or be shut down completely by allowing entry to minors--or are Madrid's nightclub regulations truly that lax?

The scene where Curro, having passed out from being unable to handle the liquor, is then carried unconscious out of the club laughingly by both Cristina and her roommate to their apartment where they undress him and leave him lying on Cristina's bed, etc., is patently ridiculous. Who would actually do this? You would think these women would realize the kind of trouble they'd potentially be getting into? Why not simply shove Curro into a taxi and tell the driver to take him home to his parents. But, of course, that would ruin the fantasy.

Actually, Curro grated on my nerves so much throughout that I could not possibly root for him to bed Cristina--which I can only assume was the intended purpose of the film. However, the end-credits were already rolling before any such hoped-for "consummation" was to be revealed onscreen.

At least "Summer of '42" was perfectly clear about that.

Some spoilers:

Despite the drama and compelling force of this film, I nevertheless immediately questioned the validity of the claim by Beth (the supposed "lawyer") that Sheriff and David MUST return to Malaysia in order to "share the blame" by serving several years of jail time as "their responsibility for part of the ownership" of drugs found on Lewis alone--the latter being the young man who had unfortunately remained behind to be arrested on a trumped-up charge of "trafficking" and consequently left to rot in prison until his date with the hangman. Do such "shared responsibility" laws truly exist in that country and would foreign nationals really be expected to return and face certain jail time? I highly doubt it.

At one point in the film, the obvious question was asked: why didn't the Malaysian authorities contact Sheriff and David earlier and directly with written documentation about Lewis' arrest as well as the circumstances regarding his presumed fate and explain how their return could mitigate it? Better yet, why didn't they make their own inquiries via the U.S. State Department and/or Amnesty International rather than accept Beth's nagging words as "fact"?

That Beth offhandedly dismissed those obvious questions should have instantly raised a red flag in front of Sheriff and David. A normally suspicious person would have brushed off Beth's frivolous comments that (to paraphrase) "things don't work like that over there". (i.e Malaysia).

Too obvious, and despite their acknowledged fears, was the likelihood that Sheriff and David could easily have found themselves ensnared in a trap simply to satisfy the abomination that is Third World "justice".

Then there was that appalling kangaroo court overseen by a judge who, despite his seemingly initial intention to be lenient, became suddenly and overly-emotionally "outraged" at the last moment by a sensational and critical foreign press report of the trial.

Finally, one look at Lewis' horrific condition in prison should have made it clear that he was ruined as a human being even if he had been released on compassionate grounds, so to have expected his two friends to voluntarily surrender themselves to a similar fate is inconceivable.

* * * SOME SPOILERS * * *

Okay, so I have a theory (probably not original) that movies such as "The Strangers: Prey at Night" are created for the simple purpose of forcing the audience to scream right back at the idiocy that is taking place on screen and, once having left the theater, trade heated opinions about how stupid it all was.

I mean, why would anyone whose life is clearly in imminent danger hesitate to blast away with their gun at an attacker? Isn't self-preservation basic to human nature? Maybe such films are subliminal advocates for the NRA's propaganda: "See, folks, you NEED a gun no matter where you are in the U.S.A.". Hmmm...yeah, right!

And why, oh, why don't people under dire threat immediately think about grabbing the nearest available item or weapon to defend themselves; a stick, an ashtray, ANYTHING that they can use to clobber an assailant? This just doesn't occur often enough in such films.

Also extremely infuriating is when someone is running away down a road while being chased by a vehicle. So, where exactly do these fools run? Not along the side, no, but DIRECTLY IN THE CENTER where they will most certainly be run over! Oh, yes, and the runner never ever considers zig-zagging and then quickly doubling back in the opposite direction, which would force the vehicle's driver to hit the brakes and awkwardly reverse in order to catch their potential victim. Good grief, hasn't everyone figured that one out by now?

And, of course, there is the time-worn, done-to-death (ha ha, sorry!) scenario of the vicious assailant miraculously coming back to life no matter how seriously injured they were shown to be. The killer could have been set on fire, run over by a bus, or shoved over a cliff yet there they are, clambering back up to their feet brandishing their axe, knife, whatever.

Yes, I suppose some people DO need their "fix" by paying to see this nonsense (no, I didn't watch it in the theater nor rent it, thankfully), but certainly I DID shout at the too-often stupid actions of the victims. "No, DON'T go THERE!", "GET UP, for God's sake!", "Pull the damn trigger, you idiot!", etc. Arrgh!

A passable 1956 film which just happened to be Barbara Eden's (of TV's "I Dream of Genie" fame) first onscreen appearance (all of ten seconds, so don't blink!) as a reporter.

For the curiosity of aircraft buffs, the first plane shown leaving the U.S. and arriving in Panama is a four-engine Douglas DC-4 of the then-fictitious "PSA Airlines" which (coincidentally?) became an actual airline company in 1995.

The second aircraft leaving Panama for the fictitious nation of "Boca Grande, Pararico", South America is a twin-engine DC-2, registration number N39165 and according to Google sources may well still be in use, although likely for a flying club for vintage craft airshows. Search in airport-data dot com.

Also fictitious for the film's purposes was the presumably Panamanian (or other foreign) "Aerea Pan Latina" or "PLA", "Pan Latina Airways" as painted on the DC-2's body. However, this plane could not have been legally registered as N39165 since Panamanian aircraft of that era would have have had an HP prefix followed by three numbers, i.e. HP001-HP999; all N-prefix registration numbers being within the U.S.A.

Although a well-paced film, the notion that a late-twenties, diminutive (5'2"), female with only two years on a police force would already be a lieutenant, is laughable--indeed misinformation--not to mention her running around virtually everywhere in high-heeled boots which would definitely NOT be police-issue!

The "Baltimore" setting--including uniform patches and cars with Maryland licence plates--was clearly a stretch, and way too clean and tidy to have been filmed in that seedy city. The closing credits revealed Calgary, Alberta as the main shooting location.

The star, Australian-born Ms. Emilie de Ravin, successfully hid her native accent. She must have had a good voice-coach after relocating to the U.S., although I imagine that an American or Canadian actor would be hard-pressed to successfully pull off a believable Australian accent without months of practice!

The boyfriend in the film, played by tall (6' 3 1/2") Ivan Sergei, seemed miscast: a hulking, rather odd-ball character and, being a civilian, too often presumptuously showing up to chat with and comfort Ms. de Ravin right smack in the middle of her intense and dangerous police operations--something that would be seriously frowned-upon by the authorities in the real world.

Incidentally, the final scene took place at the corner of 16th Avenue and 7th Street, downtown Calgary where today as of this posting (April 2018) most of the retailers shown in the background no longer exist or have moved elsewhere.

In the case where a film's closing credits or IMDb data does not specify actual filming locations, I've developed the habit of attempting to identify them by freeze-framing on various, potential giveaways such as vehicle licence plates and/or specific infrastructure such as bridges, the logos on railway and public transit, retail and restaurant names (where they have not deliberately been altered), phone numbers on signage, and even mundane things like the type and colour of fire hydrants, etc.--information which can often be identified and tracked down via Google and online license plate directories in order to solve the mystery, although some places defy analysis. Too many films, for various reasons, do not or will not reveal where they shoot.

***Spoiler Alert***

The opening, slow-motion scene seemed too much like one of those overly-done dream segments--a common tactic used in such films. Would such a graphic photo of a corpse be shown on the front page of a newspaper?

True, Kim Delaney was believable in that she kept her head for the most part, managing figure out how to escape from her shackles and to utilize various diversionary tactics to elude her pursuer.

I thought, however, that the slow pacing and deliberately anticipatory background music in the police station scene where Kim realizes that her assailant was in fact a cop was a dead giveaway because the "surprise" was telegraphed to the viewer too soon. I knew almost immediately what was about to occur. Instead, they should have had Kim open his office door and upon seeing him seated at his desk, gasp: "You!" and then run from the building. But, of course, that would have eliminated most of the subsequent drama.

I must admit, too, that I took great pleasure every time the nasty cop was dealt a solid whack and made to suffer his clearly painful injuries as he stumbled along in his thankfully fruitless pursuit.

***Spoiler Alert***

Why didn't the father disguise himself while on the run? You would think that with movies of this type, a man fleeing the law or criminal bent on catching him would cut or dye his hair, grow a beard, change his clothing style--even wear a hat from time to time to throw off pursuers? Loni Anderson changed her look in "Necessity" (1988) when running from her drug-dealer boyfriend who had ordered a hit on her.

Another plot flaw: in "Abducted: A Father's Love", in the gas station scene where the FBI agent is questioning the station owner, why didn't Larry Coaster simply stay behind the wall where he was already hiding out of sight? Instead, he foolishly panics and runs right past the FBI guy! Who would actually do that in real life?

Reminds me of the countless films I've see where a car is chasing a running person, and what does the runner do? He/she runs down the middle of the street! BAD IDEA! No, instead he/she doesn't think to jump toward the curb or leap for the nearest doorway or--better yet- -suddenly run in the opposite direction thereby forcing the car driver to awkwardly reverse. No, the runner stays on the road and either gets hit or shot or whatever. Arrgh!