Movie Review - Second Chances

Second Chances

2010

The Cast

I'm not too sure what the writers, Angelique Palozzi & Francesca Palozzi, or the director, Jean-Claude Lord, were aiming for when they created this movie.  It's listed as a Crime, Mystery, Thriller but for the first half of the film, it fails on all three genre's and, at times, seems nothing more than a pompous and over-acted Soap Opera.  Even Melissa George's acting couldn't lift it out of the sickly sweet.  It's not until the second half of the movie that the story starts to get interesting - though I had been close to turning it off by then.

It really is a strange thing because EVERYTHING changes in the latter half; not only does the story pique your interest a little more, but the direction becomes tighter and more focused, giving you a better atmosphere and, very nearly, creating tension, and the acting becomes stronger and the character portrayals are more believable and not so "throw-away" as they previously were.

However, this doesn't stop the film from being poor.  There are sections in the story that could have been utilised better.  For example, when the detective tracks down the shop where a suspect hired a costume he is informed that the person hired two costumes, a police uniform and a clown outfit.  Later in the film, Melissa George, is at a party with her son and there are clowns.  Neither the director or the writers used this to create tension or build suspense.

Another big failure of the film was the over-used cliches.  The main one being the relationship between Melissa George's character, Kate Fischer, and Detective Lucas Kelly, played by Ryan Scott Greene.  They used to date each other in high-school (don't they always(?)) and after a heated "What went wrong?" argument, they end up in a passionate kiss, then on the stairs fighting to open the buttons on blouse and shirt, then in the bedroom...  Don't get me wrong, if I had the slightest chance to bed Melissa George I'd take it, but come on people let's get original, please!

So for the first half of the movie, I was bored, though not enough to turn it off; however, the Chromebook did come out.  Even though the second half improved considerably, the Chromebook stayed out, though I did look up a few more times.  So I'd only recommend this to Melissa George fans, of which I became one after I saw her in Triangle, and only if you can multitask, like surf the web, iron, etc...

I give this a "one chance" only 3.75 out of 10.

The Trailer