I found BETRAYAL to be a fun B-movie thriller from director Mark L. Lester, the man who made the superlative COMMANDO back in the day. He's working with a much smaller budget here but the film is much better than its IMDb rating would have you think. It's essentially a road movie in which a mother and son get into difficulty with some drug dealers and decide to head off for a while, only to end up taking along a hitwoman hitchhiker being pursued by the mob.This film is on the cheesy side at times, but it's generally pretty well made and certainly fast-paced throughout. There's always some violent action in the form of shoot-outs going on to keep your mind occupied, and enough oddball characters to bring to mind movies such as TRUE ROMANCE. An ageing Erika Eleniak plays the protective mother while Julie du Page has a ball as the femme fatale. Elsewhere we get Louis Mandylor and Tom Wright reuniting after MARTIAL LAW alongside smaller parts for old-timers James Remar and Don Swayze. It's no masterpiece, but it did entertain me.

I certainly don't agree with the raving reviews others gave this piece of crap. First of all director Mark Lester cast it poorly. In the likes of Julie Du Page (that's a real name?) playing a so called sex pot. Wrong. She's not that attractive to seduce a blind man. And she's so phony on her come ons. Obvious. In her Fredericks of Hollywood bra and panties (a mistake in costumes) she was all skin and bones with no bust at all. Most of the time she's squeezed in, pumped up and pushed together to give her a cleavage at all. Her back bone protruded her bony body. Yuk. Don't tell me those idiots that fell for her charm didn't notice. They must have been hard up. Also with too much lip gloss on her bot-ox lips. Funny scene is when she supposedly goes into the train station inconspicuously, wearing a skin tight, low cut, flaming red dress, with her mop hair and sun glasses - too funny. What she didn't have, Erika Elenkiak, as the tough mother, had too much of. Wearing too tight sweaters throughout the film making her breasts look over sized, she didn't do too much acting. Only looking forlorn and confused. Did she not know what was happening? Adam Baldwin plays a small role, thank goodness. With his usual non expressive face he wanders through this trite movie aimlessly. Then we have the son, played by Jeremy Lellliott, who spends most of the film crying. If he's not ogling our hit whore, he's sobbing "woe is me and my mom". He also must have had his hair dyed along with his mom to that brassy blond. It looked so fake.It was late at night when I watched this so most others were spared the pain I went through watching.

Yes, Betrayal is a B-thriller. Though, the opening sequences hint a sort of 80s made-for-TV movie quality, which this movie might've done better as. That, or, if the writing had been strong enough, a psychopath exploitation movie of the 60s and 70s. Instead, Betrayal is poorly written, and at times, poorly acted.Here, the stories of two groups of people collide. On the one hand is the seductive Jayne, a ruthless hit-woman who settles a contract for a mob boss, but then decides to run off with money meet her partner somewhere in Texas. She's quick with a gun and has a "nuclear weapon between her legs," so the henchmen have no easy task ahead of them trying to get to her. On the other hand, you have a seemingly quaint mother and teen son who are heavily in debt. So, the bonehead son (and this is not his first of flubs), having connections to street thugs, decides to help his mother by delivering some cocaine for a gangster. Only, he is jumped and the stash is stolen. And the gangster thinks that the son tried to rip him off (though, other than a drive-by shooting, he doesn't seem convinced enough to stick around looking for him). So his mother decides that now, they have to flee to Texas to stay with her mother. So of course, they cross paths with Jayne who concocts a story so she can hitch a ride with them. And now they have mafia, crooked cops, and the FBI on their tail... the chase is on.Only, despite the forced meeting of the characters, the movie might've been more enjoyable B-movie fare if the events transpired in a more believable way. Given, the scenes between the mother and son at the train station, you'd think it was just another day they were going to visit grandma rather than the necessity to flee from a gangster looking for his stash of cocaine. There are also several opportunities for them to escape from Jayne just as there are opportunities for the hit men to kill Jayne. As the movie progresses, things proceed almost haphazardly as though it were a light dress rehearsal. In absence of the budget for greater action sequences like chase scenes and the like, the writing should have at least been much stronger.

Julie Du Page, as a sexy, efficient assassin who likes to strip down to her lingerie before killing her victims (well at least they die happy), is a large part of what makes this movie work. She effortlessly switches from sweet to ice-cold to aggressive, and she knows how to use her sensuality to work over Erika Eleniak's teenage son. Erika, as a divorced mother with financial problems who makes the wrong move by giving a car ride to Julie, appears to be a little bland at first, but as soon as the life of her son is put in danger, she turns into quite the wildcat. Given all the build-up, however, the final confrontation between the two women could have been longer. Also, the script seems to be running around in circles for large periods of time. But overall "Betrayal" (or "Lady Jane Killer" - a much better, less generic title) is not a bad little movie. (**1/2)