As Good As Dead (2010)

Touches You

Just perfect...

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

I watched this largely on the basis of the cast. I like both Andie MacDowell and Cary Elwes. I admit that even just reading the plot outline made me uncomfortable - MacDowell plays a woman whose husband was a murdered white supremacist leader; Elwes plays the man she believed responsible for his death, so she and a couple of cohorts kidnap and seek revenge by torturing him. It sounded pretty brutal and unpleasant, but I do like both MacDowell and Elwes. So I watched it.It is brutal and unpleasant. The extended opening part dealing with Ethan (Elwes) and his family and his troubles with his landlord seems kind of disconnected from the basic plot, and once Helen (MacDowell) and her team start taking their revenge on Ethan it does become a rather sick and twisted story, becoming even moreso as more and more people get drawn into the plot for revenge.There's some potentially redeeming quality to this as long as you believe that Ethan really is innocent; a horrible victim of mistaken identity. In the end, though, the (unnecessary in my opinion) plot twist that closes the movie establishes that he really was there when Helen's husband was killed. So he loses much of the sympathy that had been building for him and to me an already unpleasant movie just kind of fizzled out with the concluding scenes.The fact that a movie is brutal and unpleasant doesn't make it a bad movie. This certainly keeps your attention as you wonder how far the trio of revenge seekers is willing to go, but in the end I just didn't find this to have had any real point or message. When all was said and done, it seemed to have been violence for the sake of violence; brutality for the sake of brutality. It had no redeeming qualities once it was over. It deserves some credit for managing to hold my attention, but it loses a lot for, in the end, leaving me very disappointed and empty. (5/10)

While the general premise, in other words, the motivating factors of the antagonists, is quite good in that it's atypical, interesting, and makes a lot of sense as the motivating factor for these people to make the protagonist's life a living hell for most of the running time of this film, it was thrown into a ridiculously overstaged package.Firstly, the guy they're after just HAPPENS to be one of two of the last holdouts preventing the demolition of a building in the way of a big real estate venture. And why is he in this position unlike virtually every single other apartment dweller in New York? So the bad guys can make as much noise and be as sloppy as they want while they interrogate the guy in his apartment without having to fear any intervention by police or neighbours. Regardless, if they wanted to interrogate him and not kill him outright, to avoid getting caught, the only sensible option would be to isolate him on his own, probably at night, throw him into a van, and drag him out into the country or the woods.However, these criminals clearly WANT to get caught since they don't even wear gloves. One of them reveal's he's an ex-con who REALLY doesn't want to go back to prison, so to me, right off the bat this movie becomes impossible to take seriously. In addition to this, they happen to be very LUCKY and strangely brazen as they break into this guy's apartment a mere 30 seconds after the police visit him, and it happens to be the one time his door isn't locked for fear of his landlord's goons, and only because his dog distracted him. Another example of how lucky they are, is when the mother and daughter show up and the daughter runs away with one of the bad guys following her. She runs into a woman and doesn't ask for help or say what's going on, and simply waits for the bad guy to catch up, who pretends to be her father and calmly walk her back into the building. This really made no sense at all.Also, The way the protagonist escapes being bound by suddenly producing a pocket knife that seemed to come out of nowhere and breaking free at the perfect time seemed so ordained to happen as yet another tacked on plot device. I won't give away who comes out on top at the end, but it's important to note that burning bodies doesn't wash away their identity, as their teeth would almost always be able to match their dental records, so to be effective you would have to individually pull out the teeth from the dead bodies.this film would be a total waste of time altogether if it wasn't for the presence of Frank Whaley who's acting is simply amazing, and I'm surprised he's not more widely recognized because as a character actor he's right up there. Andie Macdowell as the mother on the other hand basically came across as a lame phony southern caricature, which seemed false and irritating. Altogether, It's an OK film for one time viewing, as you certainly don't get bored, but if you're a thinking person you might want to give this one a miss, because the staginess, and the characters stupid actions which I didn't fully get into, will irritate you.

I recommend this film highly, not sure why all the hate. There are good performances and it touches on something which exists in our society today, whether people choose to see the reality or not.Cary Elwes is a photojournalist who lives in NYC and is on the verge of being evicted. He lives with a daughter and is estranged from his wife. The film starts as he drops his daughter off to be with her mother. He has a golden retriever named "Mao".We see flashbacks of an earlier pivotal incident which involves Brian Cox (always excellent, look for him in "Manhunter" and "The Minus Man" with Mercedes Ruehl and Owen Wilson as a serial killer).Cox is an evangelical preacher, preaching hate, and that change in America can start with "just one match" and other such comments, along the lines of David Duke. His wife is Andie McDowell, and she has a son who we now see in NYC is 18 years old. He and his mother survived the attack but "an eye for eye" dictates they must now avenge the violence, and death of their religious leader.I will not divulge the outcome but the theme here is interesting. Frank Whaley also belongs to this religious group and in NYC he tells Elwes "I was saved in prison my leader, he was a good man". He is a zealot, but resents anyone in New York who isn't "like him". He berates the local the news stand owner, "this city is "filled with foreigners" he remarks ignorantly.McDowell is surprisingly good here, a southern woman with values about to be toppled, she has survived the horror of third degree burns over most of her body.The director and writer have ventured into territory which is real here. Preaching hatred and violence leads to nothing, but death. Whether you are in New York City or Alabama.9/10.

what it seems type of movies. I thought this movie was pretty good. It had suspense, torture, and of course a twist. It's about a woman, Helen, whose religious leader husband was killed years earlier. She has hired a sort of mercenary to track down those involved with the murder and her being set on fire. The mercenary believes he has found one of those involved, photographer, Ethan. So, he tortures Ethan in trying to get him to confess. All the while, Helen and her son whom survived the attack watch. Ethan professes his innocence and says he has proof. But, the question is will Helen or the mercenary believe him? Ethan's wife and daughter also become involved.FINAL VERDICT: Suspenseful and twisted. Worth a viewing.