This review is of the TV-14 edited version of the film. All thoughts below should be addressed as such as a review of the unedited version would be more negative

It’s time for a film about betrayal and ultimately not focusing up in time to save the day. This film definitely gets real dramatic and while it had some potential as a solid thriller, it’s ultimately not able to live up to it. The character cast is not very solid and that will ultimately always hold a film back from its full potential.

The movie starts with Claire attending a fancy party with her boyfriend. She decides to quickly ditch him for an old flame though and heads off to have an affair but before she can, he is murdered by the gangster known as Joey. She quickly screams so that Joey knows she witnessed this event and heads to the cops. They assign family man Mike to watch over her until she can testify that Joey is the crook. So there’s a strict house arrest and in theory Claire should be completely safe since this movie is realistic and it’s not like the villains are everywhere. Unfortunately Claire runs off to a party anyway and while Mike is busy having some drinks she is attacked by Joey who confirms that he will murder her if she testifies. Now she has to decide once and for all if she will be the witness here or run off. In the meantime she can betray her boyfriend Neil once again by seducing Mike who has about as much willpower as a folded napkin.

So there’s a lot going on here and definitely a lot to unpack. For starters all of the relationships here are pretty weak. Neil really has no respect for himself with the way he lets Claire run off and show him up all the time. In general I actually think parties are a really bad environment for a relationship, particularly the kind of party where everyone is getting super drunk. I would even go as far as to say you should never do any kind of dancing with other people once you’re in a relationship. Hey I know it’s a bit of a hot take but me personally? I think that’s a good boundary to have.

The sad part for Neil is it’s clear that Claire really doesn’t like him throughout the entire movie. She’s basically just with him because he has money and is a stable guy. So she intends to go crazy and have her fun now but this way she has somewhere to come back to and this guy is completely oblivious. The problem is this makes it a little harder to root for Claire because she’s such a bad character. Couldn’t they have made her a little more heroic or something? I think that would have really gone a long way personally. She just keeps on making mistake after mistake.

Of course I’m not going to shield Mike at all though. The guy is married and so any fooling around is completely taboo. Mike still allows himself to fall for Claire and that’s game over. It makes him such a bad character. Once you have gone and taken the oath you really can’t be doing things like that. He needs to stay strong and just be a quality character rather than just sabotaging his life like that. The worst part is of course he’s messing things up for his wife Ellie and their kid as well. It’s the kind of thing you can’t take back. There are no second chances when you cheat like that.

SO then you can’t root for Mike either and you’re hoping he gets bumped off in the end. The final ending of the film isn’t really satisfying for anyone. All of the characters were just so bad and it goes without saying that the romance here is abysmal as well since you’re dreading every moment with Claire and Mike. You just knew from the start that they would get together no matter how much of a bad idea that was. The film should have focused more on the actual protection angle and the main plot with Joey. I guarantee that would have been many times better than what we got.

As a villain Joey is fairly generic. He’s got a whole gang at the ready and doesn’t want to leave town since he owns the place. If the heroes actually played things smart then he wouldn’t have had a chance which is why of course they had to go to parties and such. The hostage situation was likely inevitable after a certain point which is why having Mike’s family stay in a seedy area was a bit of a risky move. I suppose you can’t move every time there is a dangerous situation but it certainly didn’t help matters.

In general the writing isn’t bad at least. You actually are invested in what’s going on which is good. It just would have been sooooo much better if the characters were more likable. I guarantee it would have helped the film turn the corner and gain a few stars. When more of the film is about the cheating plot than the actual witness protection then you know that something went wrong. Focus more on Mike lying to Claire about the danger she’s in and have the drama be about that. Get rid of them hooking up at all and instead have more moments of Joey trying to break in or some minions lurking around. Play up the paranoid angle, etc. Lots of ways you could have pushed this to make it a really dramatic film with a lot of action rather than one about bad choices all the way.

Overall, This was not a good film. The main characters absolutely sabotaged it and the ending was very weak. It just wasn’t deserved so I would have handled that wayyyy differently. Past a certain point the film was doomed anyway but at least the ending could have tried to deal with the severity of it a little better instead of brushing it all to the side. I would recommend skipping this film. There are way better thrillers out there that focus on the main plot all the way through as opposed to all of the drama.

Overall 4/10