No Good Deed ** (2014, Idris Elba, Taraji P. Henson, Leslie Bibb) – Movie Review

Idris Elba stars as a handsome and charming but violent and deranged escaped convict called Colin who looks up his cheating wife, then has a car crash in a storm and hoves up at a nearby house where he terrorizes the occupant, lawyer Terry (Taraji P Henson), who is alone with her two children.

Her husband Jeffrey (Henry Simmons) is away for the weekend, supposedly playing golf with his father on his birthday, but her friend Meg (Leslie Bibb) is coming over with a bottle of wine to keep her company. The slightly wounded and very wet Colin knocks at Terry’s door and asks to use her phone to get help for his car, and of course she asks him in after only a little hesitation.

The setup and the actors and the direction and the production are all fine. Elba and Henson are certainly convincing enough. The problem is Aimee Lagos‘s script. We very much needed not to know that Colin was a psycho until at least two thirds of the way through the movie. It should have been the film’s major twist. As it is there is a nice twist, but it’s kind of thrown away. And then we need another couple of twists that we don’t have here.

Indeed we need another whole act after the movie ends at only 80 minutes. You leave the cinema shouting ‘Where’s the rest of the movie? Now that’s not good. Short and sharp is fine, but that’s not good. It’s like they ran out of money before finishing it, when actually what they’ve run out of are ideas and imagination.

Thriller buffs might be satisfied a bit with this acceptable rainy afternoon movie but there’s a hugely better movie trying to get out from here. Indeed thriller buffs were satisfied. It was a surprise box office hit in the States, grossing $52.5 million against a very modest $13million budget.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Movie Review

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