No.220 : The Deceived (TV) (2020)

The Deceived at the IMDb

A change of pace for us now as we delve into the box sets section of the ‘My5’ app - Channel 5’s online offering. I’m sure this show would have broadcast on their main platform but it passed me by. I don’t watch much Channel 5 to be honest, as I largely dismiss it as a lot of tabloid nonsense and soaps. This sweeping view wasn’t totally discouraged as the inescapable ads that peppered this app viewing were for programmes about being fat and WWF Divas. ‘The Deceived’ may however be their attempt to get away from such risible rubbish (there was also a trailer about a show about what happens to your rubbish) as this was a pretty decent, quality production.

The series has only four episodes of about 44 minutes each so you could easily see it off in one evening, as we did. It’s debatable whether there is enough material to fill two and a half hours of viewing, but lubricated with a bottle of wine it passed the night in a decent, if largely unmemorable manner.

The film opens with Cambridge student Ophelia eyeing up her bearded lecturer, Michael. Michael has a beard that a bird could nest in and looks like Mac out of ‘Always Sunny’, but the girls all agree he’s dreamy. The two meet up in the time honoured fashion of her dropping papers and him helping to pick them up, and soon they are having awkward looking sex in his office chair. Michael’s wife is a successful author and he’s living in her shadow, but he does have a new book of his own coming out.

He seems to put it about though, and Ophelia gets warned off when she and a friend witness Michael fighting with another woman. He then disappears and after some detective work Ophelia tracks him to his remote home village in Ireland. It turns out that Michael’s wife Roisin has died in a fire and he has returned home to sort out the house and her affairs. His day gets even better when Ophelia announces that she’s pregnant.

She moves into the creepy, half burnt out, family pile and soon starts to hear strange noises coming from a locked room. She also gets attention from a local handyman and an overbearing mother figure who suspects that Ophelia may not be the literary agent that she claims to be.

As the episodes go by a young man appears looking for his missing sister and Ophelia starts to see and hear strange goings on. Why is everyone feeding her tea and what really happened to Roisin on that fateful night?

I quite liked this workmanlike mystery thriller. As soon as it got underway you knew where it was going and the only cliff-hanger was which of the obvious outcomes would the writers chose for the big revelation. There was more than a little of ‘Rebecca’ about the whole enterprise with it clear to us that Ophelia wasn’t going nuts, and that there were strange happenings afoot.

I’m not the sharpest at such things but even I cottoned onto the twist by episode two and it was a long 90 minutes wait to see things pan out in the predicted fashion. To be fair it was well made with rural Ireland and Cambridge both looking great. The cast was largely good with there being no big names to distract you. Emmett J Scanlan in the lead had most of the heavy lifting to do, and he carried it off well moving from charmer to…something else, with relative ease. I was less sympathetic towards Emily Reid as Ophelia who was a bit needy and annoying.

Overall I think this could have been condensed into a 90 minute film as there was plenty of padding and subplots, like that with the builder, not going anywhere. There was nothing you haven’t seen before, but as a lockdown time passer you could do worse.

THE Tag Line : No Mystery Here! 61%

No.203 : The Judge (2014)

The Judge at the IMDb

Alas this isn’t another film about Judge Dredd, but an overlong court room drama starting Robert Downey Jnr and Robert Duvall, who we recently saw in the more enjoyable The Outfit.

Downey plays Hank, a slick lawyer who will defend any client no matter how sleazy. He earns the big bucks and has a cute daughter, but his marriage has failed and he is estranged from his family. As a big case is about to close and just as Hank moves in for the kill, he gets a call to advise that his mother has died. The court adjourns and Hank heads back to his sleepy Indiana birthplace for the funeral.

He drives in a new truck, that looks for all the world as product placement, before meeting up with his two brothers, including a fat Vincent D’Onofrio, and his father Duvall, who was the town’s judge for 40 odd years. Hank has a drink and a squeeze with an attractive barmaid before meeting up with his old flame Vera Farmiga who you’ll know from ‘Up in the Air’. We learn that Hank went out to a concert one night and never came back, but fortunately Vera is most forgiving.

Hank gets a lift from Vera ,after falling off his bike, and he meets her daughter who just happens to be the barmaid he had kissyface with. She’s on break from law school and there is a brief suggestion that Hank may be her father.

Meanwhile damage is found to the front of Duvall’s car and he’s charged with killing a man by knocking him off his bike. It turns out the victim was a criminal whom Duvall had treated leniently but had gone onto kill a young girl. Duvall can’t remember the hit and run and is suffering from cancer and early onset dementia. Hank agrees to defend his Dad with the aid of Dax Shepard’s idiot lawyer, and they are soon up against Billy Bob Thornton, who has a score to settle against Hank.

Will the old man go down? Well what happens is…Objection! Watch it yourself or you can guess. You’ll probably get it right!

This was a decent effort but at 140 minutes it was too long. A lot of time was spend charting Duvall’s demise and to be honest I don’t need to see him shitting himself and getting showered down. It may have been a touching moment of weakness for a proud man, but I’d have been happy with a tell don’t show scenario here.

Hank’s journey was predictable as he started to see both sides of an argument to the extent that he was pondering taking over the judge’s chair at the end. The courtroom scenes were decent as the unbreakable case was slowly picked apart. There was too much of ’Objection your honour’ and too much latitude given when they started yelling out random stuff with the judge happy to see where it went.

The conclusion was balanced to some degree, with everyone winning but also losing, and with justice seeming to be served. Downey did his usual good show but if he donned the Iron Man armour half way though you wouldn’t be surprised. I could have done with more of Dax in his David Pleat suit, and it was a shame he didn’t get enough to do to earn ‘Employee of the Month’ this time around.
The will they won’t they love story didn’t go anywhere and the lovely Vera seemed a bit desperate.

There was some growth, some reconciliation and some redemption but alas too little editing. Trim an hour and you’d have a neat 90 minute drama rather than this meandering and bloated soap opera.

THE Tag Line : You are Judged to be Too Long!  67%