No Good Deed

Was there no one on the set of No Good Deed to tell Taraji P. Henson and Idris Elba that they were too good for this?  No one to sit them down and ask what they were doing starring in this exploitive, nasty thriller that is far below their talents?  Apparently not, as not only are they headlining this trash, but they are also credited as Executive Producers.  They must have seen something in this script.  What it is, I cannot tell you.

The movie gained some attention last night when the film's distributor pulled all advance screenings less than 24 hours before they were to be held.  The official statement was that the studio did not want the third act twist to be revealed in early reviews, so that audiences could discover it on their own.  Anyone who knows the slightest thing about movies knows that things like this just don't happen, and the real reason Screen Gems was afraid is that they knew the movie was going to get torn apart by the press.  But there is also an uglier reason.  You see, this is a film that is built around repeated scenes of women being beaten, maimed, tortured and murdered.  And given the current controversy surrounding Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice, the distributor obviously got cold feet, and could feel the backlash that was to come. 

Now, I'm not saying the studio is at fault for releasing this movie the same week as the controversy.  They obviously had no idea what was going to happen.  But, even without that ugly shadow hanging over it, this is a vile film.  It's made even more vile by the fact that the film has been sanitized just enough so that it can receive a "family friendly" PG-13.  This is a movie where the male lead character murders a pair of prison guards, then makes his way to his ex-girlfriend's house, where he breaks in, waits for her to come home and then strangles her to death with his bare hands and smashes her head with a lamp.  He later bludgeons another woman to death with a shovel, frequently beats and torments the female lead character, and holds a cute little five year old girl and her baby brother hostage at gun point.  I don't care what kind of editing you use, these kind of images do not belong in a movie rated PG-13.

No Good Deed is offensive dreck, but it doesn't even have the courtesy to be interesting offensive dreck.  It's slow, boring and fails to generate any tension.  All it does manage to create is a sense of disgust, and a sense of pity that talented actors like Henson and Elba are forced to endure it.  Henson plays Terry, a woman who once had a successful career as an Atlanta prosecuting attorney, but she gave it up so she could raise her two kids, while her husband (Henry Simmons) frequently leaves her alone as he goes away on business or golf trips.  One night, a storm is raging outside and Terry is getting her kids wound down for the night, when there is a knock at the door.  It's a stranger by the name of Colin (Elba), who claims he got in a car accident, doesn't have a cell phone, and needs to use her's. 

We've already witnessed Colin's adventures before he wound up on Terry's doorstep.  We saw how he was denied parole after seemingly being involved in the murder of five different women, as well as a deadly bar fight.  We've also seen him escape from the prison van by killing the guards, and make that deadly visit to his ex-girlfriend's house.  Terry invites him inside so he can wait for the tow truck to arrive.  Colin walks menacingly around the house, looking at the family photos, and gets a little too close to the kids.  All the while, the storm outside intensifies to the point that a tree branch literally flies in through a window in the house just so there can be a jump scare in the middle of a scene.  Terry's best friend (Leslie Bibb) also stops by for a "girl's night", but we know she won't be around for long.  Her character is blonde, and obsessed with sex.  And everybody who has ever watched a mad slasher movie knows what happens to the blonde girl with the dirty mind.

The remainder of the film is a "cat and mouse" game as Terry tries to keep herself and her kids alive, and fend off the murderous Colin.  Her main form of attack is to wait for him to come around the corner, then strike him in the head with some kind of blunt object, like a fire extinguisher or a candlestick.  He takes so many blows to the noggin that he starts to resemble a Home Alone villain.  The movie is so long and labored in its set up that we become impatient for the action to start up.  And once the action does kick in, it's about as routine as a thriller can get.  Henson and Elba are good actors, and bring some skill to their performances, but the script does them no favors, or even much character motivation.  They're pretty much on their own the entire time they're up on the screen.

No Good Deed probably wouldn't seem so offensive if it felt like it had more of a point other than to parade violent and cruel images done to women across the screen.  If there was some kind of inspiration to the screenplay, or perhaps an interesting character, I would be able to look at it as a thriller.  This movie does not want to thrill or excite.  It simply pumps us full of bad feelings, then sends us on our way.  The fact that nothing really happens between the outbursts of violence is a telltale sign that the filmmakers were at a loss to keep things interesting.  This is a film that spins its wheels hopelessly, assaults us with some nasty images, and then spins its wheels some more.

I don't know who a movie like this is made for.  Maybe I'm better off not knowing.  As I sat there watching it, I tried to think of the person who would enjoy a movie built around cliched thriller tropes mixed with images of violence to women, and I came up empty.  That fact that I was watching the film in an empty theater at least gave me hope that whoever is out there who would enjoy it, there aren't many of them.

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