A mad bomber is blowing up large chunks of Seattle and seems to have a vendetta against the city’s bomb squad. John Pierce (Sam Elliott), a burn-out who used to be the best of the best when it came to defusing bombs, comes out of retirement to help with the investigation. The only problem is that all of the evidence seems to be pointing at Pierce. Pierce does his best to prove his innocence while more and more members of the bomb squad get blown up.
The Final Cut has its moments. The lengthy opening scene features Amanda Plummer and John Hannah as two cocky members of the bomb squad who discover that defusing their latest explosive isn’t going to be as simple as they think it is. The final 20 minutes takes the film into Saw territory, with an underground lair and a woman who has been turned into a human explosive. In-between, though, the movie is often slow and Sam Elliott sleepwalks through a role that really demanded the low-budget equivalent of a Lethal Weapon-era Mel Gibson. (Wings Hauser comes to mind.) The actual identity of the bomber will be easy for anyone to guess though the bomber’s final fate is actually executed pretty well.
Director Roger Christian is a long-time associate of George Lucas’s and also worked on Alien as a production designer. That’s probably why the sets, especially that underground lair, look surprisingly good for what was obviously a direct-to-video B-movie. Five years after The Final Cut, Christian would attain an infamous immortality when he was the director unfortunate enough to be credited as directing Battlefield Earth. Compared to Battlefield Earth, The Final Cut is damn good movie.
After I finished watching Lost Boy earlier today, I realized that it was time to rewatch and review Stolen Daughter. Stolen Daughter originally had its Lifetime premiere on July 26th. I watched it and, if I remember correctly, I had a lot of fun live-tweeting it. So, why hadn’t I reviewed Stolen Daughter up until this point? The final week of July was not an easy one for me. The world seemed angry (this was the same week that Cecil the Lion was killed in Zimbawe), I was dreading the idea of getting older, and — briefly — I was too overwhelmed by all the angst to write. It happens.
But anyway, enough about me and my obsessive personality! Let’s talk about Stolen Daughter!
As Stolen Daughter opens, Martha Dixel (Rachel Hayward) is on the verge of being released from prison. After shooting the drunk driver who killed both her husband and her daughter, Martha was convicted of manslaughter. She’s been both a model inmate and psychiatric patient and, now that she’s been paroled, she has no intention of ever returning to prison. However, the world is not quite ready to accept Martha’s freedom. As she leaves prison, she is greeted by people protesting her release. Then, after dealing with all that, Martha is struck by a van.
As a result of getting hit by that van, a dazed Martha now believes that both her husband and her daughter are still alive. After the driver gets out to check on her, Martha steals his van. After driving around for a while, Martha thinks that she sees her daughter at a local playground. Drawing a gun, Martha kidnaps her “daughter” and, after tossing her into the van, drives off to meet up with her “husband.”
Of course, the teenage girl who Martha had kidnapped is not her daughter. Instead, her name is Sarah Wilkins (Sarah Dugdale) and she is the daughter of Stacy Wilkins (Andrea Roth). Stacy happens to be a police detective and, as soon as she learns that her daughter has been kidnapped, Stacy demands to be put on the case.
However, Stacy has demons of her own. She had been on psychiatric leave after being involved in a hostage situation that led to the hostage being killed in front of her and has only recently returned to active duty. As a result, the condescending detective who has been put in charge of the case — a real prick named Barker (Josh Byer, who has appeared in several other films directed by Stolen Daughter‘s director, Jason Bourque) — refuses to let Stacy anywhere near the investigation.
And so, working on her own, Stacy tries to track down her daughter. Meanwhile, Sarah has to figure out how to keep the increasingly unstable Martha from snapping even further.
There are literally hundreds of Lifetime films that center around kidnapped daughters but what sets Stolen Daughter apart is that Martha is a much more complex character than we traditionally expect to find in these movies. When we first meet Martha, it’s impossible not to feel sympathy for her. Even after she gets hit by that van and kidnaps Sarah, the film makes it clear that Martha is not in control of what she’s doing. As the film progresses, Martha becomes more and more unstable and we start to realize just how dangerous she actually is. Even though she’s frightening by the end of Stolen Daughter, you still can’t help but feel for her.
Sarah Dugdale’s had a pretty busy year on both the Lifetime and SyFy networks. Not only has she had to deal with a Sorority Murder but she also found herself trapped in The Hollow and was one of the Sugarbabies. She did a good job in those movies and she does a good job here as well. Finally, Andrea Roth totally kicks ass in the role of Stacy. Check out the scene where she beats up a guy while searching for daughter. I am so totally going to learn how to do that!
Stolen Daughter was directed by Jason Bourque, who has been responsible for some of the more entertaining movies to show up on both Lifetime and the SyFy network over the past two years. Along with writing my favorite SyFy film, End of the World, he also directed a film, called Black Fly,that I think everyone should see.
One good thing about Lifetime is that they reshow all of their movies like a hundred times. So, keep an eye out for Stolen Daughter.
A mad bomber is blowing up large chunks of Seattle and seems to have a vendetta against the city’s bomb squad. John Pierce (Sam Elliott), a burn-out who used to be the best of the best when it came to defusing bombs, comes out of retirement to help with the investigation. The only problem is that all of the evidence seems to be pointing at Pierce. Pierce does his best to prove his innocence while more and more members of the bomb squad get blown up.
Through the Shattered Lens 