Certain Prey (2011)

Memorable, crazy movie

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

I enjoyed this exciting story - excellent to have such strong roles for women - instead of trite female roles where the women are protagonists who best or beat up all the men - here are some in the antagonist or villain role - that out smart everyone - until they don't. Great script and excellent story. I like Mark here acting more natural than his part on NCIS where he is pretty much iron britches Gibbs. Here he's more human. The thing about filming in Canada is the light never looks very good. This film has that "made in Canada" look that all the Jesse Stone pictures have. It would've been a lot better actually filmed here in the US. I hope he makes more of these movies using the same character - really fun.

To say the plot of this movie was fresh in my mind is a serious understatement. I had just finished rereading the book at 2:30am, thinking "this would make such a good movie!" and I turned the TV on and no joke, the movie was on USA at that exact moment. It was kind of freaky.Talk about being thrilled!But I was very very disappointed. First of all, Mark Harmon???? He is no Lucas Davenport. I dream of Lucas....Mark is NOT him.... no. Plus Lucas isn't fully grey yet.I am still baffled at the casting for Marcy Sherrill. Angie Harmon would have been a much better casting. And Black as well (not to mention that in the books Black is still half in the closet gay)And why on earth did they change Carmel's car from a bright red Jag.I would really love for these books to be made into real, credible, GOOD movies with a great cast that can actually act. I don't understand why John Sandford is approving these or whatever. The books are so great. It pains me to see them made into "barely acceptable made-for-TV (and-not-even-lifetime-quality" movies.

It is the adaptation of a book and it played out like a book, with narrations and other adaptation problems. It wasn't terrible but it wasn't that good. I thought Mark Harmon did a very good job of portraying Lucas Davenport. He really captured the world-weariness of Davenport as I had pictured him in the book, without going over the top with the character nor playing another hard charging "Gibbs" role. Davenport was an older cop who had been doing this a long time so I thought this would be a good role for Harmon. I have always liked Mark Harmon and he is just a bit older than I am. As for the other characters they seemed to be poorly cast and poorly acted. I have never liked Lola Glaudini who played Carmel (even though her body looked great). I didn't like her when she was on Criminal Minds. The guy who played Hale is nowhere near what I expected especially with the ranting about how good looking he was but was dumber than a box of lint or whatever they said. Both Athena Karkanis ...Marcy and Tatiana Maslany ...Clara Rinker were, I don't know..... poorly cast, poorly developed and poorly acted. And I don't think these were bad actors based on other roles I have seem them play. Maybe it was poor directing. But they didn't mesh with my expectations of the characters. Over all I was disappointed, expected more and will watch another NCIS marathon if I want to watch Mark Harmon act.......

The movie is a tremendous embarrassment and failure from virtually every standpoint. I can see why they didn't send it to reviewers prior to "opening night." Besides a few shows and cable news, I don't watch much TV, and I couldn't believe what I was seeing. It's as good a sign as any that America is in serious decline. From the very beginning, the language of seemingly all the characters offended me. Also childish, as well as offensive, was the fact that every character seemed to be sleeping with everyone else. I was appalled by the violence. They witlessly and childishly put the worst traits of traditional male characters into the female characters here. Everyone was described as the "best" -- best lawyer in town, etc. The solving of the case seemed riddled with plot holes and miraculous assumptions and luck. The motivation for the murder of the wife seemed unbelievable -- a high-powered successful lady lawyer kills the wife of a man she has a one-time quickie with in the bathroom of a party 2 years ago because the husband doesn't return her affection!!! I can't recall any good reason for Mark Harmon's character zeroing in on the night club owned by the serial killer. I didn't like someone in the deputy police chief's position breaking into the woman's apartment under the circumstances (and great "luck" finding a bullet and spotting the key phone call entry). His violent "interrogation" scene was a joke. I didn't like many of the supporting cast. Finally, I couldn't believe that Harmon's rainbow staff defied him so -- they couldn't take "no" when he wouldn't disclose what he was doing at the moment, and they went so incredibly far as to blackmail him into divulging the info by threatening to reveal a past sexual dalliance as sexual harassment! They should have been fired. Harmon's character here was too retro and silly -- fast cars and women, fancy dresser, rich computer guy retiring to be top cop. Remarkable that the big-time hit-woman could miss Gibbs at the end.