Two young children dead, floating face down in their family's bathtub. Their mother, shot in the back of the head, lies next to the tub in a pool of her own blood. On the floor slumped against a blood covered wall is her husband, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. For rookie Homicide Detective Chris Malloy this grisly scene is more than he expected to see in his first week of working the graveyard shift. For his partner, grizzled yet poetic Detective Murphy MacCasey, this is but one tragedy among countless in his fifteen years in homicide. They haven't seen anything yet.
Reviews
I honestly thought this was made in the mid 1990's based on what i assumed the budget was. But I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. The movie starts out as you would expect, with a murder scene and a young detective. The beginning is pretty slow and I really had to force myself to pay attention, but I'm glad I stuck with it. Much of the movie is about the relationship between the veteran detective and his daughter, but if you listen and pay attention, this is a major part of the plot. If you pay attention to the veteran detective's odd sayings, the movie becomes very enjoyable. There are no mention of doors being passed until the closing monologue, which, in my opinion, just adds to the movie.
Is this thriller a masterpiece? No, definitely not. Is therefore so awful as some other reviewers proclaim? Again, I feel to say no, although I found it closer to the bottom marks than to the excellence. I would define this movie as a rather slow attempt of emulation of Se7en, unfortunately without the greatness of that glorious movie. It has a touch of original inspiration (the serial inducted-suicides are somehow well constructed, if you know what I mean...), but the dialogues are dull, the acting rarely convincing... The final is highly predictable as well as its rapid escalation unjustified in front of such a long movie - the twist, by deduction and by an incredible amount of hints spread throughout the story, could cover the only hero-protagonist left. Bottom line: you will watch it, then you will forget it. Rapidly;)
This is not one of the best thrillers I have ever seen but it certainly is - by far - NOT the worst. There are times when the slowness of it tested my patience. I did find that the script writing was well enough done to capture and maintain my interest to the end. At times the delivery of dialogue was a bit stilted. While the acting was more than a tad weak - again it was by far superior to MOST low budget films.The two central characters played off well against each other and lent an intriguing dynamic to the story. The younger cop was determined to work with the well-regarded older cop who has more than earned his reputation. On a very basic level, the plot is simplistic yet plays out well to a disturbing, and twisted, conclusion.
This movie is, hands down, one of the worst I've seen in a long time. The script is nothing but terrible, clichéd lines, the acting is atrocious, and many of the stylistic touches are annoying (especially certain scenes where the characters' lines are echoed, as if the director didn't trust us to remember the important ones). I feel bad for the people who worked on this film, because they probably thought it would turn out really moody and suspenseful. Instead, I found myself laughing at the lame "twist ending" and nearly dozing off at certain points. What a waste of time. I almost never comment on this site, but this movie was just so bad that I had to come here and warn others about it.