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Reviews
Warehouse 13: Fractures (2012)
Reprehensibly disrespectful to a real-life person
Alice Lidell was a real person. She was the inspiration for the title character in Lewis Caroll's 'Alice' books. Other than that she lived a quiet unassuming life, and did not seek fame or notoriety.
Here the makers of Warehouse 13 turn her into a 'monster of the week' style villain - a homicidal maniac who accidentally killed her mother with a gun and then got tipped over the edge into madness.
People will no doubt say that it's only a bit of fun. To those people I would ask if they would mind if somebody turned their great grandmother into such a character. We should also remember that the makers of this programme will have made money out of this. It also changes the perception in a real life figure in the public imagination, in terms of their history, their deeds, their moral character, and their personality.
I would be interested to know if the makers of this episode sought permission from the real Alice Lidell's family. I'm guessing they didn't.
Alice Hargreaves (nee Lidell) died in 1934, less than 100 years ago. Imagine if somebody who knew her switched on their television to see the person they knew being portrayed as a monsterous killer. That would be quite a shock, and a somewhat distressful experience one would imagine.
NCIS: New Orleans: Master of Horror (2014)
Mentally Ill equals dangerous murderer in LaLa made TV programmes. Disappointed.
Poor research mars this episode of a usually good series.
Someone's killing people and making them look like characters from 'classic horror' stories ... or should that be films? The scriptwriters don't appear to be sure.
The body of a judge turns up with her hair dyed red and wearing what the investigators describe as a Victorian dress (it's a floor length dress but not particularly Victorian - the shoulders are bare: this was frowned on in Victorian times). The resident geek assures us that she has been made up to look like Lucy Westenra from Dracula, and shows us a picture that an artist has made of the character that he insists proves it. Well ... as far as I can see, whoever drew that picture is clearly the murderer, because it looks exactly like the victim ... and here's the thing - there is no detailed or definitive description of Lucy Westenra in Bram Stoker's novel. As far as hair colour goes, Lucy is described as having 'sunshiney curls' and is later described as a 'dark haired woman' : nowhere is it specified her hair is red. Looks like the scriptwriters just watched the Francis Ford Coppola adaptation and thought the viewing public would be too illiterate to notice they had not done their homework.
But here's the really offensive thing about this episode: mental illness is once again used as a shortcut to villainy.
Turns out that when a lie detector test doesn't work on suspect number one, the handsome criminal investigator concludes he's got disociative personality disorder (with zero reasoning except that it means the team won't have to get off their backsides to investigate other suspects). Stone me, it turns out he's correct in his plucked out of the air reasoning. The team manage to get the suspect to turn nasty by shouting in his face (in real life shouting in someone's face is likely to turn at least 80% of the population nasty out of an instinct to defend oneself). From then on in the episode turns into a knock-off of 1992's 'Primal Fear' and the suspect does his best Edward Norton impression.
There's some fun stuff about Halloween costumes, CCH Pounder and Lucas Black give nicely natural performances and the actor playing the suspect gives a good performance in a role the scriptwriters didn't bother to research except to find useful bafflegab so that the other actors can deliver exposition heavy dialogue that is basically explaining the plot and sounds like it - particularly when they do that thing where they share one long speech between several characters but the actors don't act like any of these ideas are occurring to them as new thoughts. Some better direction of the actors would have ironed out this problem.
Locked Away (2010)
Once again mental illness is used as a shortcut to villainy - IRRESPONSIBLE but typical of US TV movie makers
The villain of the piece seems to be the only likeable person in this by-the-numbers TV movie thriller. The rest are unsympathetic cardboard cut-outs, who come across as shallow and complacent ... and they don't get any extra depth as the film progresses. Tracy Martin is good in a small part but is inderused here. Jean Louisa Kelly does her best to create a three dimensional character out of a script that appears to be written by looking through a reference book on mental illness and picking out illnesses the scriptwriters considered juicy, and does well to convey inner drama (the only one of the principle actors who do) when the script gives her character no plausible motivation to do what she does.
I seriously question the makers of TV movies in the USA who use mental illness as a shortcut to evil. Maligning an already misunderstood and persecuted faction of the population. I have lost count of the amount of US TV films (and cinema films) that follow this trope. Also there is also the overused trope that women who can't have children are dangerous to women who can ... and their babies. A highly irresponsible portrayal. The writers of this film should hang their heads in shame for creating this propaganda.
At the end of the film the three supposedly sympathetic characters shoot the villain dead and then the mother of the heroine just says, "Let's go," implying they are just going to leave the body there and not even bother to report it. The epilogue should show them facing manslaughter charges, or at least pleading the case for self-defense. Instead they are just shown having a saccharine filled 'happy ending' now that the baby has been born ... all problems left behind them. Highly irresponsible film making, but par-for-the-course it seems in Hollywood and US TV Movie drama.