MOVIE REVIEW: 'No Good Deed'

Internet scribes will not give up the fight that Idris Elba might be the next James Bond after Craig hangs up his tux in a few years (though the actor himself has denied this, I feel he’s just being cheeky). I support this nomination because that man has the presence and the charisma, the confidence and the frailty to play both the wounded man and the naughty boy. Plus, he has one of those accents that can make reading the phone book aloud sexy; it alone can practically save a movie.

Not this movie, but most movies. Elba’s tongue alone could not save this movie.

With No Good Deed, director Sam Miller, who worked with Elba on the excellent British television series Luther, has assembled a gallimaufry of stalked-woman and intruder-thriller tropes that grate against one’s patience as the typical dominoes fall by the minute. Colin Evans (Elba) has just blown his parole on an involuntary manslaughter charge stemming from a bar fight (a reporter’s coverage conveniently clues us in that he has a history of violence towards women) and he’s got a hankerin’ to extend his sentence indefinitely when he shoots his way out of the transport van, steals a vehicle and crashes it right by the lovely home of suburban couple Terri (Taraji P. Henson) and Jeffrey (Henry Simmons). Terri is a harried mom of a toddler and a newborn, and her husband offers no help or support. When he leaves for a golfing weekend, she decides to have a girls’ night with her man-hungry best friend, Meg (Leslie Bibb).

Lonely housewives always abandon reason for the wiles of escaped convicts, so when the doorbell rings in the middle of a thunderstorm, Terri puts her family in jeopardy because the handsome stranger needs to use a phone and is just so darned cute. It only takes her a quick second to adjust her hair in the mirror when she runs to get the first aid kit to tend to his head wound. Soon, she and Colin are bonding over relationship troubles and brewing tea together while the tow truck takes an hour to make it through the suburbs.

“I miss my own fire,” Terri laments, as Colin stares at her with a sensitive look that reveals one word: “Jackpot.” Thus, Miller and screenwriter Aimee Lagos (96 Minutes) take us down the familiar Hollywood path of smart women making foolish choices. The character of Terri is a former prosecutor specializing in battered women and she brags about how easy her job could be since the abusers were often stupid, but all this statement really reveals is her own lack of sense and good judgement. This characterization does not do any justice to Henson, who deserves a role with more depth. Elba is also underserved in his role as a sociopath whose anger is as misguided as it is savage. In a tiny role, Leslie Bibb gives a moment of clarity as someone who doesn’t trust Colin from the start, but even she is short-served by a clichéd mistake.

For such a short movie (just under ninety minutes), it takes so long to get past the bonding that once the situation becomes evidently dangerous, no amount of tension has built to sustain the rest of the film. The story becomes less of a thriller and more of a series of humiliations for Terri to endure. Colin is supposed to get inside her head as a sort of manipulative power play, but instead he first punishes her for responding to him and then for rejecting him. All this does is make the woman mad and him more reckless. Throw in two innocent children and a ridiculous twist ending and it’s hard to gauge who you have less sympathy for and more frustration toward.