CheerupSilver Very Cool!!!

Supelice Dreadfully Boring

RipDelight This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Scotty Burke It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

jotix100 Callum Crane, a powerful lawyer, is seen in his summation on a case being tried for defamation of character. He has even orchestrated the right moment in which a ray of sun will shine on the defendant's face to dramatize the occasion, while fumbling on a Shakespeare quote. He is too theatrical to lose the case. His own take on the two million dollars awarded the offended party is probably half of it. Crane believes he can have Sophie Lennon, an attractive young woman who works in his office, just after he had been toasted by the partners. It was the wrong move because Sophie did not have any intentions to have sex with the powerful head of the lawyers' firm. Callum has no idea the humiliation he provokes in the young woman he decided to rape against her wish. Nathan Corrigan just recently out of jail for a car theft, returns to town hoping to go straight. His pals have another thing in mind. He receives a blow when he learns Callum is his father. Going to meet him, he runs into Sophie, with whom he likes from the start. Callum, who is not aware of the relationship, sees in the young man a powerful ally for what he wants to do when Sophie becomes his bitter enemy. Nathan becomes the instrument of Callum's wish to get Sophie out of the picture, something that backfires."The Guilty" a 2001 film directed by Anthony Waller is a film that seems to have gone to video, or did not get a commercial distribution. Written by Simon Burke for a television movie, it was adapted by William Davies for this new production shot entirely around Vancouver. The film has good moments, but the plot does not hold its momentum because its so many twists and turns. There are too many things that do not completely make sense, especially between Callum and Nathan, or for that matter, the nomination of Callum to a Supreme Court seat (state, that is, not federal) is too much to be believed, when as a star lawyer, Crane can name his price for any case he would decide to take.There are other plot holes that leave the viewer scratching his head, but one gives it the benefit of the doubt. There are other aspects that work. The sinister character of Callum is one of the creepiest characters Bill Pullman, a good actor, has been asked to bring to life. Gabrielle Anwar shows up as Sophie, the violated young woman who vows revenge on the powerful Callum. Davon Sawa appears as Nathan. The wonderful Joanne Whalley has nothing to do as the two-timing wife of Callum.

Robert J. Maxwell I always enjoy Bill Pullman's work. He comes at us in a crab-like, sideways manner. He seems to speak out of the corner of his mouth and look at an object out of the corners of his eyes. His voice, soft and slightly crackling, is that of everyman, maybe somebody to play bridge with.And Gabrielle Anwar is fine too. She has all the proper features of a formula Hollywood actress -- expressive eyes, strong but delicate nose, pulpy symmetrical lips, an exemplary figure -- but they don't add up to stunning beauty. The arrangement of her features results in a kind of compelling ugliness. Her acting is okay, a little on the weak side.That just about gets the good stuff out of the way. The movie stinks. Pullman, in a moment of wanton drunkenness, more or less rapes Anwar. And when Pullman is appointed to a federal judgeship, he has her fired with a generous separation package so that she won't be around to make trouble.But she does make trouble. She shows up wet and shivering in his office and threatens to spill the beans on him. Pullman then accidentally meets some young guy, rather a nice fellow, just out of jail and gives him an envelope containing money and the identity of the person Pullman wants murdered.The ex inmate thinks the deal over and disposes of the unopened envelope. It is retrieved by one of his Goth goon friends who needs the money to pay off a debt to some local hoods. There follows a good deal of cutting back and forth as the good guy tries to save Anwar from the desperate bad guy and his friends.No point going on with the plot. If you've seen any of the many thrillers along these lines you can pretty much figure it out without being drawn a picture, although one touch is at least slightly novel. After she repulses all attempts to warn her, Anwar actually IS battered to death. But it should come as no surprise that the good guy, trying frantically to warn her, should be blamed for the murder.Okay. I won't go into the clichés except for one. The punk who steals the envelope. This was shot in wintry, soaking-wet British Columbia. The trees are bare. The temperature of every artifact is barely above freezing. Yet the killer drips with sweat. Outdoors or inside, it makes no difference. His face seems covered with canola oil. It's rubbed into his hair -- what there is of it. He wears the tonsure of a monk from the Dark Ages. His hair is cut in the shape of a bowl, with the razor line high enough to reveal the zig zag tattoo on his occiput. His features are those of a Middle Eastern sodomist and his face glows with evil. He wears filthy jeans and a black leather jacket with chain zippers. He lives in a garbage dump.Getting the picture? You know what might have added a touch of originality to the script? I mean, aside from improvements in wardrobe, make up, and casting? If Pullman did not, in fact, represent arrogant male patriarchy. If Anwar had simply made up the story of the rape. It would have introduced a note of edgy ambiguity. After all, who is to say whether or not it happened, since there's no longer any evidence.Some ten or fifteen years ago, a pretty young woman threatened Bill Cosby with exposure and degradation, claiming she was his illegitimate child. (She looked nothing like Bill Cosby although at least one courtroom artist simply copied Cosby's face onto her figure.) Cosby's tapped phone revealed a celebrity predator perfectly at ease with extortion, negotiating matter-of-factly to keep the price of her silence over a million dollars. A plot something like that would have saturated the movie with a kind of noirish shadowiness.Instead, we simply have good and evil. The powerful white guy (and his wife) are counterfeit and duplicitous. Anwar and her would-be savior are innocent and good. These Manichean distinctions are beginning to irritate me, on and off the screen. You want to see uncomplicated good and bad? Watch a Roadrunner cartoon.

sol1218 **SPOILERS** Extremely over-plotted made for TV movie that has at least a half dozen different storyline running concurrently through it at the same time.There's young and troubled Nate Corrigan, Devon Sawa, who' looking to turn his life around after serving six month behind bars on a stolen car conviction. There's also Nate's two muddled headed and criminally prone friends Leo & Dennis, Jaimz Wolvett & Darcy Belsher who are about the last people that Nate, being on parole, should associate with. It's these two noodnicks who pick Nate up from prison in a stolen SUV and almost end up getting killed in a wild ride where they almost ends up killing a number of carnival security guards who try to stop them from demolishing the place.The major plot in the film is the connection that Nate has with sleazy and oily defense lawyer Callum Crane, Bill Pullman. It's Crane who it turns out, through his birth certificate, is Nate's biological father. The father Nate never knew he had! It also turns out that Crane is somewhat of a ladies man cheating on his wife Natalie, Joanne Whalley, who in return is cheating on him by having an affair with Crane's law partner Brent Frazer, Kent Thembleh. The thing that really gets the movie, with all the confusion in it, going is Crane's rape of his first day on the job secretary Sophie Lennon, Gabrielle Anwar. Having Sophie fired from her job to keep her from giving him any trouble the very smart Crane showed just what an ignorant and overconfident jerk, despite his perfect recored as a defense attorney, he really is.It was Sophie on learning that her hot in the pants and unethical lawyer ex-boss was appointed to be a respected Federal Court Judge where he's sit and pass down judgment on rapists like himself that she started blackmailing him to either resign his post or she'll, by revealing just what a sleaze-ball he is, force him to do it. What in fact ties the Crane Sophie entanglement together in the movie is that Crane's illegitimate son Nate is also Sophie's roommate! Now how's that for a coincidence!Believe or not all this is just half of what's going on in the movie "The Guilty" the other half has to do with Crane trying to get Sophie knocked off by non-other then his, whom he at the time doesn't realize, son Nate! Nate not willing to do the job, he doesn't even ask his old man whom he's supposed to knock off, which has his good friend Leo, who's in debt to a gang of murderous bikers, do the hit-job instead.***SPOILER ALERT*** The last fifteen minutes of the film is packed with so many twists and turns that your left feeling dizzy just trying to follow it. When you and Crane finally get the pay-off to what the movie's ending is really all about you by then have been left so mind numbed and psychically exhausted that it takes you a while to figure just what the big surprise ending is really all about!

Jessica Kay Bill Pullman (Independence Day and The Last Seduction) plays Callum Crane an on top of the world, thinks he is all that, lawyer wanting to be a judge. Raping someone (Sophie) isn't the way to make judge. Sophie wants Callum to pay for what he did and she won't stop until his life and career is messed up forever. Callum wanting her died won't stop until the job is done. He decides to hire a hit man (Devon Sawa) named Nathan. But the plot gets a twist when Nathan doesn't know how to tell his Dad he is in fact his Dad. Yeah, you guessed it his Dad is Callum Crane the evil rapist. Callum hires his own son to kill someone and he don't even know its his son. Wait more; No one in the movie knows that Sophie the raped victim is also falling for Nathan who is staying with her and her friend. With time ending out for Sophie, Nathan has to pick a side and either stay out or help (Help Sophie or his Dad). Murder, rape, drama, twists and turns even when you think the best part is over there is move and more after that. Follow it closely and don't see anything. Bill Pullman and Devon Sawa team up again after the 1995 Casper hit they are back again together on the screen.