Amber Frey: Witness for the Prosecution

A very well done, made for TV movie, I thought, detailing the complicated relationship between Amber Frey and Scott Peterson, convicted of murdering his wife Lacy and unborn son. I first want to give credit to the lead actors here - Janel Moloney as Amber, and Nathan Anderson as Scott. To me, both of them absolutely nailed these parts, and created a completely believable recreation of the relationship. Moloney was especially convincing, particularly after the truth about first Scott's marriage, and then the death of his wife comes out. Her confusion, uncertainty, anger, hurt and fear all seemed very real. Scott's charisma, and his ability to sweep Amber off her feet while developing a completely convincing alternative lifestyle and apparently being able to maintain the pretense of loving husband and father to be (even Lacy's parents didn't even suspect that he could have had anything to do with her death) create a chilling portrait of a sociopath.

The movie opens with Amber on the witness stand (thus the title; I admit that I was a bit put off at first that the producers chose for what I expected to be a tabloid-style TV melodrama a title that is best known as a classic British film from the 1940's, but the title does fit once the context is known), and the impression is that the story is a visual recreation of her testimony at Scott's trial. In that context, it's worth mentioning another impressive performance - that of John Rubinstein as Scott's attorney Mark Geragos. It's perhaps limited in some respects by its made for TV status, but in all honesty I don't know that there was enough in the Amber-Scott relationship to carry a full length feature film. This was just enough to be satisfying. 8/10