This film stars John Travolta as the noncustodial father of a teenage son who has a history of lying. Terri Polo plays the ex-wife and Vince Vaughn is the new man who enters her life.The story is average in creating suspense, but mines some real emotions that people often have: the lack of control that a non-custodial parent feels regarding the well-being of a child; the helpless feeling of a child in the household of a menacing adult; the confusion of a parent who is torn between irreconcilable interests.Its mediocre manipulation of these emotions and the fears that come from them is the primary reason for the film's substandard quality. The actors are fine, but the vehicle undermines their performances, perhaps because, in trying to convey the various perspectives of the characters, it fails to commit to any one of them. This is mostly a failure of style and technique. The result is a film that engages the viewer, but fails to deliver the expected suspense. It shines briefly in moments, then is undermined by quick cuts or hurried scenes.

Domestic Disturbance (2001): Dir: Harold Becker / Cast: John Travolta, Vince Vaughn, Teri Polo, Steve Buscemi, Matt O'Leary: Title refers to trauma in a small area with John Travolta starring as a boat manufacturer divorced but maintains a good relationship with his son. His son is known for mischief and the news of his mother's new engagement doesn't help matters. Formula plot regards John Travolta investigating allegations made by his son that her fiancée committed murder. Vince Vaughn plays a public figure with a nasty side whom his son claims burned a body. Formula trash right up to its dumber than dumb climax where certain people just happen to end up in particular places at the right time. Directing by Harold Becker leaves much to be desired. He previously made the terrible Mercury Rising, another film about a kid in pearl. Travolta's role does him little justice as it is just by the numbers. Vaughn always seems to be in particular places at the convenience of the screenplay. Teri Polo is suppose to be blind to common sense. Steve Buscemi is wasted as Vaughn's former associate whom will obviously end up dead. Matt O'Leary plays the kid who reason for focus is to be threatened and being fakely heroic. With nothing surprising or suspenseful, viewers are left with a real yawner. Any theme presented is replaced with disturbance in the form of bullshit. Score: 1 / 10

How is one to react to a film whose idea of a chief source for dramatic content, indeed entertainment, is the ambiguity surrounding whether or not a frail and insecure twelve year old boy is going to get his either head bashed in or is going to fall foul of being suffocated to death? Broken down into its rawest of forms, Harold Becker's 2001 film Domestic Disturbance is a cheap; flimsy; nasty 89 minute exercise in sleazy thrills pumping through the motions and applying deadening logic in the process of begging the audience for some sort of reaction: "Look! Look at that! React, go on; react!" Prominent British director Alfred Hitchcock of oft Hollywood residence would call on the unexpected; would call upon the unpredictable and the outrageous, but would almost always be able pull it back by the end in a manner that would see it sync the preceding actions up with what the truth of the matter really was. Things were preordained and made sense in most of Hitchcock's films, but the nifty nature of most of his thrillers were that they were never channelled in a glaringly obvious manner at the time of their happening.Domestic Disturbance film will begin with some disfigured opening titles in the mould of Hitchcock's famous thriller Psycho, itself a film that happened to insert into proceedings a dangerous man appearing friendly. In a similar mould to that of the aforementioned thriller's part-time lead Marion Crane, we witness a car driving what appears to be an awfully long way over these titles; a prominent theme tune inferring a certain amount of dread overlying proceedings and things kick off expansively on a bright day to some fancy camera-work, but in essence, the only item connecting Becker's tedious thriller to Hitchock's masterstroke is that of the fact his villain here played the villain there in a 1998 remake.The film settles into following that of a boat builder in Frank Morrison, played by John Travolta; a charming and upstanding individual with a career in something that has him create items in a very articulate, very precise manner for the pleasure of others. Here is a man whose kindness extends so far, that he is willing to risk his business disappearing altogether due to his generosity; he's a well natured, everyday sort of a guy with his feet on the ground and head in the right place: when the new owners of a fancy boat he's just built them celebrate with champagne, he opts out for a straight-up beer. Frank is a man carrying out a craft that was taught to him by that of his father; now doing his utmost in passing on said trades downwards onto his own son, the aptly played Danny (O'Leary), without ever necessarily being forcing or overbearing in the process.Through some insane instance or two, Teri Polo's Susan has split from our Frank and opted instead to shack up with Vince Vaughn's Rick Barnes; a guy whose stock price in a pharmaceutical company went sky-high and as a result, retreated out to this idyllic community of yachts and warm weather to start enjoying life. With Danny arrives various issues of delinquency and rebellious behaviour. I suppose you would be on edge if your father was as kind as Travolta is here and if your home was one of those detached, whitewashed residences from around the late 18th Century you might get in places like Maine - yeah, I guess any kid almost have to be on the Ritalin from day one in that domestic set up. Danny's problems are put to us solely so as to pump up suspense during later reveals, suspense born out of whether anyone's going to believe this unruly kid and what he says. Surprise: they don't.Things seems to work out well in the beginning; Frank bears no grudge towards Rick nor Susan and they marry without issue. It's here things get tricker; Danny's ending up unnoticed in the boot of his new step-father's automobile has him witness the murder of one of Rick's old "business cohorts", whose true reasons for being in the sleepy town are more broadly linked to Rick's real persona. One thing leads to another, and Danny falls under the watchful evil-eye of his new relative as Susan idly stands by and Frank maintains a deeply routed sense of trust about the situation as everything plays out.Some of the more annoying sequences include that of Teri Polo. When you want a passive, dopey, mandatorily stupid middle aged blonde female character, whose voice could cut through panes of glass, you go to someone like Teri Polo to play the (delete as appropriate) wife/girl-friend/partner whose hapless task it is to spout all the customary dialogue and patronising crap to her kid once the catalyst happens and no one believes him. There was another instance of it happening in a film from the same year: Joe Johnston's Jurassic Park sequel, in which Téa Leoni (why do all these annoying women and their names look the same on paper!?) was required to do all the stuff you shouldn't do at exactly the time it wasn't required: "Honey! Dr. Grant says that's a bad idea." "....says WHAT'S a bad idea?" The film is all surface and zero substance; a series of obligatory set-ups relying on a sense of suspense, although getting very little out of its audience bar the proverbial clipboard complete with sheet of paper housing a list of phrases; some tickable empty squared boxes beside them and a chunky HB pencil, that falls flat on its face in what is a trudging, unholy mess of a picture.

Susan Morrison gets married to wealthy industrialist Rick Barnes. Danny, her teenage son with ex-husband Frank, isn't happy about this; he stows away in Rick's car one night, planning to go to Frank's house.But while there, he witnesses Rick murdering mysterious stranger Ray Coleman.Problem is, Rick's managed to dispose of most of the evidence, and he's considered a pillar of the community, while Danny has a history of lying.Frank believes him, though, and does some investigating of his own, as Rick's shady past slowly catches up to him and his new family....A movie of the week, gets that little bit better thanks to Travoltas performance and Vaughn on full psycho mode. The annoying things about these films are that you know who the bad guy is, but the red herrings and the narrative of these films just make you want to shout at the screen.As soon as we meet Vaughn, you know the guy is trouble, he offers travolta work and is just too nice, never a good sign. Cracks begin to show when we are introduced to Buscemi, arguably the best thing here. And then Vaughn has a heated game of catch with his new stepson....Bad news.It's all as predictable as the slew of films that were released in the early nineties, pacific heights, unlawful entry, single white female, and nothing new has been added to the mix here to make it different.It's an easy watch, with good performances from the cast, and thats it really.