Scanialara You won't be disappointed!

Grimerlana Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

Mjeteconer Just perfect...

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

timlucero I watched In a Stranger's Hand before Shakma on Christmas eve and enjoyed it. I remember when I first watched this on Lifetime and Shakma on either Showtime, HBO, or Cinamax after I graduated from highschool. This was the first movie that I became familiar with Brett Cullen and then was Prehysteria, Complex of Fear, and Apollo 13. Plus, I like watching Megan Gallagher and others too.

manuel-pestalozzi I did not think this was a good movie. The overly loud musical score is poured over it like cheap gravy and I suspect that the dramatization of this true event was anything but subtle – probably they thought they had to spice it up.And yet, there is something deeply irritating about the whole affair that made it worth the watching time invested. The main character is oddly believable as a living doormat. I have to agree with other commentators that Robert Urich delivers a stunning performance. The man plays a big, intelligent fellow, a former football pro and a successful businessman, but people don't hesitate a second to walk right over him. The man seems to be outright plagued by an unhealthy kindness and, above all, an over developed sense of responsibility. When a business partner sets an important meeting at a date when he is supposed to go on a long promised trip with his girlfriend he cancels the trip. When he wants to pass a found doll to a traffic cop who does not accept it, he takes it with him. When he tells his secretary she should send the doll to its owner by mail, the secretary refuses flat out and virtually orders him (her boss) to deliver it personally – and he does it. The result: he gets nearly lynched as a supposed kidnapper and then beaten up time and time again. This becomes all the more grotesque as the guy's wardrobe seems to consist only of two ill fitting business suits which become more and more tattered and dirty as the story moves along. He never even removes his tie! It is very odd and slightly surreal.The man is coerced into helping to find a girl who disappeared by the girl's single mother, a waitress. She transfers part of her guilt and responsibility over to that stranger she had never met before and who has nothing to do at all with the kidnapping. And he accepts the transfer. This is beautifully shown in the scene where he stays in the woman's apartment because she can't sleep. She leans against him and falls asleep at last. In the morning they both awake, the woman refreshed the man (unshaven, in creased business suit and limp tie) with a numb side against which the woman had leaned. But the masochistic climax is definitely the moment when the woman storms into a restaurant where the afore mentioned important business meeting takes place and tells the guy to go with him. He tells her he will, when the meeting is over. But for her it cannot be in a few minutes, it has to be RIGHT NOW. The urgency is clearly irrational but he dithers and dithers and then obeys. Oh, it was hard to bear.The bottom line: This movie shows that different genders have different agendas and priorities and how not to deal with that issue. The rather downbeat ending is very telling in that aspect.

sol1218 ***SPOILERS*** After having a spat with his girlfriend Kate, Isabella Hofmann, over a trip that they planned to go on to Antigua computer whiz and software specialist Jack Bauer's, Robert Urich,bad luck continues to follow him when he can't get to his car, because it's locked up in a local garage,and takes the subway home. Watching a woman and her daughter on the train Jack, after they both exit the subway car, spots a poster for a missing four year-old child right in back of him and it's the little girl that he just saw. Like in an Alfred Hitchcock thriller Jack Bauer becomes an innocent bystander who get's caught up with something that he at first doesn't understand and later almost costs him his life. Trying to report the missing girl to the Child Recovery Foundation, that issued the poster, Jack at first finds out that the girl Carla McKillin, Erica Dill,is no longer missing and when he goes to her mom's Laura, Megen Gallagher, apartment to return Cala's doll, that she dropped on the subway, he's attacked by the mother and her neighbors thinking that he kidnapped little Carla and was trying to get a ransom in return for her.Jack at the police station, with Laura, gets in touch with the Child Recovery Foundation and is told that Carla is indeed still missing and that her name was somehow removed from their computer. At first hesitant but then working together with Laura Jack tracks down the woman who he saw with Carla on the subway Amanda Johnson, Christine Danford, at a local bar outside the sixth street station that she got off at with Carla. On dope and terrified of what she knew about not only Carla but scores of other young children, who disappeared over the years, the same way that little Carla did Amanda is later found dead in her hotel room from an overdose that her drug supplier forced on her. As Jack starts to check out, by computer, the movements of Amanda during the time that she had Carla with her he finds out that she was being treated for drug addiction at the local St. James Hosiptal. Amanda scrawled the name St. James on a mirror with lipstick as she was dying. Putting all the evidence together Jack soon realizes that Carla was the victim of a major child and baby selling racket that was using as a front the very agency that was supposed to track down and find missing children; non other then the Child Recovery Foundation.Though guy Robert Urich really gets a worker-over in "And Then She Was Gone" as he gets belted and beaten, what a shiner he got early in the film, at least three different times in three different scenes as he's chased and then chases the kidnapper of Carla through the subway system and the airport on a plane headed for the UK. Tense stand off on the plane as Jack and Laura force themselves on trying to rescue little Carla from her kidnapper before the aircraft goes airborne. A bit overdone ending didn't take away any of the suspense and excitement from the rest of the film and the final scene was truly uplifting with Jack and Kate reunited and back together again after she came back home from her vacation, minus Jack, in Antigua. After all the dangers thrills and excitement that Jack went through in the movie there's nothing on the trip and vacation with Kate that he passed up, and almost destroyed their relationship,that could equal what he went through back at home.

greatwar I saw this recently on Lifetime cable. I looked at it to start simply because Robert Urich was in it, and had just passed away. I figured I wouldn't stay with it for more than a few minutes but ended up seeing the whole thing. I was surprised at how much tension and suspense this Tv movie had packed into it, even with the distraction of commercial interuptions! It also features an ending that is somewhat open to interpretation which is a nice change from the usual TV movie storybook ending. There were some logic holes ie like why didn't a character call the police ( but that would have watered down the climax) however this is a good film.