"Small Sacrifices" is based on the story of Elizabeth Diane Downs aka Diane Downs who shot her 2 daughters and 1 son in 1983 on a lonely country road while she was driving the kids home from a friend's house late at night. Diane said time and again a strange man with shaggy hair came out of the shadows and demanded her car. When she refused, he shot her sleeping children. In the book by Ann Rule, the kids are named Christie, Cheryl and Danny. In this treatment, they go under the aliases of Karen, Shauna and Robbie. In a way this confuses me because the real names of the kids are in the well-known book and in the TV movie of the same title they go under other names and everyone can find the real names by reading the book! Mild criticism aside, this movie shows another great performance by the late, wonderful Farrah Fawcett! She is so good as the narcissistic, sociopathic Diane Downs who wanted her new boyfried, Lew Lewiston (Ryan O'Neal) to be a father to the kids even though he went the permanent route of ensuring he would never have children by getting a vasectomy. After his rejection, Diane basically loses it and writes him letters proclaiming her love for the married Lew. This was the catalyst for the shooting of the three children by their mom. All the performers are great in this movie! John Shea goes toe-to-toe with Farrah as Frank Joziak the prosecutor and he really cares about her children. A very young Emily Perkins is also wonderful as the traumatized Karen who saw her mother shot her brother and sister and her. She is the one who testifies against her mother because Shauna was shot to death and while Robbie was paralyzed by the bullet, he was too young to testify in court. Next to "The Burning Bed" Farrah has another winner in the TV movie arena!

I wanted to see this movie because of Emily Perkins. Pure and simple. I considered her role in Ginger Snaps amazing. Here, although she doesn't get as much screen time as I hoped she was equally as good (if not even better). I chose this movie out of what she did because it very much aligned with my taste in drama movies.I'm sure people who were alive at the time (I wasn't) might hear about the Diane Downs case. Where a woman rushes her three kids to a hospital after all four of them getting shot (with Diane conveniently getting shot in the arm). One of the kids dies, another will never walk again, the final child (played by Emily Perkins) gets paralysed on one side of her body and can't speak (but gradually does). The more the investigation goes on the more the evidence points to the fact Diane shot her own kids because her married (and uninterested) ex-boyfriend doesn't want to be a father.Now based on the plot, you know it is grim in tone. I am going to warn you that the more this movie goes on, the tone changes from grim to downright depressing. The scene where Karen (Perkins) goes up on the witness stand and says Diane shot her being the most depressing.Now the acting is good. Emily Perkins being the absolute best performance. Why she is not in more dramatic (or larger in the case of movies like Juno) roles is beyond me. Everybody else does a good job too, the weak link being Fara Fawcett as Diane Downs (but for two thirds of the movie that might be how things were intended).I do think people should see it, but I might warn you this might fall under the category of "great movies that I NEVER want to watch again."

This is a film based on a story that defies belief that someone, especially a mother, could be so cruel. Based on a true story that occurred in 1983, a wounded Diane Downs claims that she and her children were attacked by an armed man leaving her eight-year-old daughter in a coma, her three-year-old son paralysed and her five-year-old daughter dead. But DA Frank Joziak and Detective Doug Welch aren't convince and build evidence that proves the person who shot the children was Diane herself.The actors in this film all give great effort in bringing this shocking story to life. Farrah Fawcett is excellent as the pathological liar that is Diane Downs, portraying the role as a woman almost bored with motherhood. John Shea's Joziak was nicely depicted with a sense of warmth, determination and anger for what he knows Downs did while a young Emily Perkins gives a strong performance as the deeply traumatised Karen Downs, the eight-year-old who awakens from a coma with the knowledge of what her mother did.This film is fascinating on a level that will shock and disgust the viewers as it is reveals just how insidious and self-obsessed Diane Downs is, how she tries to lie her way out of the court case and the reasons for why a mother would commit a monstrous crime upon her own small children. The story is sickening but it is one that should be told, if only to emphasis to people why Downs should never be allowed to be free.

I had read the book, and have to say the movie, for the most part, is very similar and is just done very well. Everything from the acting, to the directing etc etc, is superb. This movie is, sadly, a true story. It stands at 4 hours or so but it always keeps your interest. Farrah Fawcett loses herself in her character, and I have to say, I don't see how this movie can be watched, without the watcher coming away with a very healthy respect for Ms. Fawcett.This true life story is so disturbing, the thought has to flash through your mind whether you can sit through a 4 hour drama about it, and although of coarse some scenes are extremely difficult to watch, as you'd expect them to be, this movie is not something you can turn away from once it's on and is both shocking and horrifying.It is directed and acted on a level as good as major big screen releases and the character development is great as well. There isn't one bad piece of acting in the movie and this Is the best I've ever seen Fawcett.