Implicated (2003)

Too much of everything

Good movie but grossly overrated

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Nowadays, they say, audiences don't follow the actors when they choose films. Back in the old days, if you liked someone, you saw everything they did. I'm afraid I'm in that category, and it gets me into trouble.I have always liked Billy McNamara. Okay, he's cute. But he did good work in "Copycat" and for some reason it wasn't followed up. I believe he had some personal challenges, as I recall, and lost that momentum.Here he is in some low-budget dreck, "Implicated," and he's not entirely successful. The cast is good: Amy Locane, Frederic Forrest, and Priscilla Barnes (unrecognizable).The plot concerns a kidnapping plot of a little girl which is devised by the father and his friend Tom (McNamara). Tom is engaged to Ann (Locane) who loves the little girl and is great with her. Meanwhile, her mother is an addict and doped up most of the time. Slowly Ann realizes that there's more to this plot than she knew - she thought she was just babysitting. She didn't realize it was supposed to be a kidnapping with a demand for ransom, and that the father was in on it. And the affable, romantic Tom has a dark side. Real dark and real mean.Someone said Roger Clinton was the best one in the cast and that "you couldn't tell he was acting." That's because he wasn't. I saw that name in the credits and knew this movie was going to be a mistake.Actually, I loved the ending, and it redeemed the film for me. The acting for the most part was very uneven, especially from the boyish McNamara. Not a terrible rental.

I thought that this was a great movie! The acting was only so-so, but the action and suspense moved! Well worth the $3.50 it cost me to rent it.

Didn't see this one when it first came out, but I was impressed with the film making on what must have been a shoestring budget. Acting was inconsistent, but overall, a very worthy effort.

Roger Clinton steals this film as a head-shaking Sheriff who stands around a lot at crime scenes and lets everybody else do the figuring out and stuff. Roger is from the Naturalistic school of acting in that you really can't tell he's acting.Actually, this is typical HBO Filler that's mostly Amateur Hour, but earns some style points and is at least a couple notches above say, Fred Olen Ray. It does generate some suspense, mostly due to another one of William McNamara's intense turns as a full blown psycho. Boyishly handsome in a Montgomery Clift way, there's still something fishy and warped about him that directors seem to like to capitalize on. You also have to sort of admire the way this film so doggedly tries to work out its tired plot.Speaking of tired, poor Frederick Forrest. He looks exhausted, and of course, quite embarrassed. Priscilla Barnes appears as a drug addicted floozy, and she's really become a pretty gutsy actress as she's aged and her looks have faded. The little girl who is kidnapped is quite poor, however, and because she seems so curiously unmoved and unaffected by all the violence and strangeness going on around her, much of the drama is drained away. Amy Locane, as McNamara's innocent girlfriend, has a good rapport with the girl, but isn't able to convey the complexities of emotion her role demands.The plot depends on major implausabilities and absurd coincidences, but in all fairness, no more so than many bigger budgeted action flics. There's reason to believe the director could go on and make a halfway decent film in the future.Finally, this film could also be seen as an unconventional tutorial for single parents looking for a way to circumnavigate the adoption system.