Ashley Judd scored a bulls eye with hit thriller which catapulted her to the A league as far as female actors are concerned. Following up on the moderately successful Kiss The Girls, Judd this time plays a devoted wife and mother who suddenly wakes up on her yacht drenched in her vanished husbands blood. The police discover her holding the incriminating weapon and the courts convict her of murder. All is not as it seems though and soon she discovers that she has been set up and sets on the road to revenge.

The film is very predictable and basically just survives on the strength of the lead performers who manage to do a reasonable job despite the weak script and material. Implausibility aside - and plenty of it there certainly is - the movie never really picks up sufficient steam and there is a distinct lack of tension due to the predictability of events on screen.

The movie is very reminiscent of the putrid Sleeping with the Enemy of a few years ago and it comes as a slight surprise and even disappointment that a man of Bruce Beresford's ability was responsible for the humdrum thriller. Perhaps the most offensive aspect of the entire film was that Beresford lifts an entire scene from the Brilliant Dutch thriller The Vanishing from 1988.

A crucial scene is lifted in the most shamelss manner. Yet Bruce, Ashley Judd and Paramount won't mind the critical mauling the film received as it went on to become the smash success of the Fall '99 season grossing a walloping $120 million plus. All in all, its a pretty tame, predictable yet pandering to the crowd kind of thriller which does manage a modicum of entertainment along the way.

The film is begging to be remade by our own local Scorsese; Sangeeta. Clearly the time has come to think twice when considering films that have done particularly well in the US as it seems taste levels have dropped to a new unprecedented low and quality to a rock bottom. The very same audiences made a smash hit out of the horrendous Runaway Bride and the pukey Phantom Menace and the loathsome Spy Who Shagged Me while gems like Lake Placid hardly earned some loose change!