The Coverup

The true story of the 1983 Thacker case could have made a great film, but this one suffers from mediocre acting, poor dialogue, a hurried plot with zero nuance, and indifferent direction. The result is an almost total lack of motivation for the audience. It's pretty much on the level of a bad TV movie.

I can't help but mention that Colby French, as the bad cop, wears the worst hairpiece in the history of cinema. Perhaps the cop in the real life story had a bad hairpiece.....?

It's altogether too bad, because this crime was an outrage perpetrated by corrupt cops, and a good screenwriter and director could have made this story dramatic and compelling. Instead, it's sleep inducing.

I am giving this particular film a relatively high score because it is really obvious that the only problem with this movie is low budget. Or lack of funding to produce. If it had been a bigger budget this would have gotten a 10. Why? For the pure emotion it brought forward, which is what I look for in a movie regardless of the genre. The direction and filming easily represented that yellowish early 1980's shade of telling a story that deserves to be told. The actors did what they could, the scenery is very 1980's and while the story could have been more evolved, it was not a Hollywood production with all the bells and whistles. I will always pull for the underdog movie and I liked it. Also, a tragic case.

I loved the story but the movie was really lacking. This movie is a sad but true story of a person losing his life to a corrupt police officer. If there was more money behind the movie it could have been a good movie.

Bad acting, bad soundtrack, bad directing and bad writing. I love true stories so I should have just stopped watching and either read about this case or found a documentary to watch.

This is the first time I've been the first person to write a review, which is surprising, considering this film has been out for 5 years ... But then again, perhaps not, because there really isn't much to enthuse about.

Perhaps it comes from having a screenplay basically written by the main protagonist, but there's absolutely no attempt to explain the reasons for the decisions that went against our "hero" - and I believe there were several - they're simply dismissed as arbitrary and possibly corrupt. And the courtroom scenes have to rank as some of the dullest and most unedifying I've ever seen in a film which is essentially about a court case.

To be honest, the most interesting sequence is the first 5 minutes (the videotape of the interrogation), but after that things start to go downhill quickly. There's no tension, and no attempt to explain anyone's motives; and the movie meanders its way slowly to the courtroom where, after more tedium, the jury return a verdict that frankly feels like it comes out of nowhere. On the basis of this outing, I'm not sure I'd trust Gabriel Mann to argue the case for the Pope being Catholic.

About the only actors who show any spark are John Savage and Lee Garlington, as the parents of Kevin Thacker. Sadly, they're not on screen long enough to give this movie any impetus, and the whole thing fizzles out like a damp squib.

Lesson for the future chaps: ponderous dialogue and trite platitudes about justice and the misuse of power do NOT a courtroom drama make.