When i first saw the summary of this movie i was expecting a lot.Good HBO production.Great actors:Rutger Hauer,Rebecca De Mornay and Ron Silver.But i was wrong.This was a really painful experience.Boring,predicitable and irritating TV thriller without tension.Very poorly directed,very bad acted.I think that this is the worst movie ever made,and I am a thriller fan,but this is not a thriller,this is just a poor excuse to spend some money on making films.I can't believe that i was excited about seeing this movie.I really love Rutger Hauer,he is a great and good actor,but this movie is really a disaster.

This is a "sleeper," an intense and involving thriller that grabs you from the start....but a film not people know about. Hey, only 10 people have even reviewed it here and the film is 13 years old. To be fair, I did think the finish was unrealistic which the typical killer-talks- instead-of shoots mentality, a familiar flaw in flimmaking. Too bad, because the rest of the movie is very good with Rutger Hauer a convincing evil blackmailer. Few actors play a psycho better than Hauer (see "The Hitcher" and "Nighthawks"). Rebecca DeMornay is a sexy woman in this film while her husband is the sleazy Ron Silver, but the latter's character is better than most the villains he usually portrays. This movie also has the unusual distinction of being a modern-day crime film with very little profanity.

This film has a unique quality in the way the story is layed out before us. Imagine an optimal pace of the film and then slow it down a bit. In other films this would be a drawback because you would feel bored, but here the superb dialogs between characters create so much suspense that you will be far from bored and the slightly slower pace of the film will create a tension that you will physically experience in every muscle as you sit on the edge of your seat and watch the story unfold. This film shows us how when you feel guilty about something, everything you hear sounds like a prosecution. Otherwise this would be just one more of those nothing-special films, but the subtle insinuations in dialogs and an excellent cast led by Rutger Hauer make it a masterpiece. It feels as if everyone involved in its creation did a perfect job while at the same time being careful not to overdo it.This is why I rated this film 10 out of 10.

Doug and Lynn Kaines (Ron Silver and Rebecca De Mornay), furniture tycoon-wannabes, are in Mexico scouting out a new location for their business. Driving back home, they seemingly strike and kill a man standing in the middle of the road. Frightened, they drive on home. Shortly after they get there, however, Shell (Rutger Hauer) shows up on their doorstep, claiming to have been in Mexico and to be looking for employment. The Kaines, presented to us as everyday people (albeit with money), instantly sense that Shell knows something about the hit-and-run - or does he? They don't know for sure - not at first - but even the possibility of the hulking Hauer being able to hold something over this affluent couple is enough to spook them. Complicating matters is the fact that Lynn's pregnant. So what would YOU do? Charming, handsome ("in an outdoorsy way," Lynn says), eager to please, Shell seems like he wants to fit in - yet he drops hints that he might have been a witness to the accident. Screenwriting being what it is today, we have a pretty good idea things will wind up in the open before too long, but not before the lives of the Kaines are completely ruined. If the lead characters were in their twenties, we'd see Shell try to do something to their parents, but since they're all grown up, Mom and Dad are out of the picture. (Which is not to say that Shell doesn't find someone close to them to harass, of course!) The story gets sillier and sillier as it goes on, but somehow the performances by all three leads keep it afloat. Hauer's doing a role he can pretty much do in his sleep, but he hasn't lost any edge off it. All in all, a fine HBO movie.