No.184 : Wandering Eye (2011)

Wandering Eye at the IMDb

You’d think after our experience with ‘Web of Lies’ that we would be avoiding Canadian made for TV films but that’s quitting talk here at the 100+ ‘W’ Movies Quest. The premise of this film involves murders against a backdrop of cheating spouses using the titular web site. Don’t look however if you are after some titillation - this film is so tame that even the word ‘whore’ is obscured by a car horn!

Our heroine is Maren, an attractive redhead who is married to a trainee doctor. She doesn’t work and is upset that’s she’s not getting enough in the bedroom despite the poor sod working all hours to keep her in lattes. She confides in her douche bag friend who offers to deliver her the goods, so to speak. She doesn’t fancy this poor bloke, despite letting him pay for dinner, and instead seeks her sleazy thrills on the internet. We know this isn’t a good idea as a cheating couple seen earlier in the film were shot by an unknown assailant. Be careful Maren, you slut!

She logs onto the titular titilation site and soon meets up with a man in a hotel room. True to form she doesn’t put out and to cap his day off the bloke gets shot when Maren leaves. The cops aren’t too slow on the case and soon two detectives, who used to be married to each other, are teamed up on the case. They manage to link the deaths to the ‘Wandering Eye’ website and with the help of their bookish computer geek programmer they manage to establish how the bad guy is finding his targets.

Troubled by her conscience and possibly her lack of nooky, Maren goes to the cops and they set up a sting operation to capture the killer. Will it be one of the likely suspects such as the man fingering his gun or the troublesome ex-friend who wants paying for that expensive lunch? Surely it’s not going to be the least likely candidate possible, someone barely seen and with no discernible motive? Could be!

To be fair this was a bit better than ‘Web of Lies’ but it shared many of the same failings as that film. The plot was as linear and undemanding as possible and the three acts wouldn’t have been more obvious if sign posts had been erected. That said the lead character’s motivation was unclear as she never really looked at all horny or interested in the poor blokes whose time she chose to waste. I didn’t recognise any of the cast but I see that the lead, Amanda Righetti, has an ongoing role in ‘The Mentalist’ which I don’t watch. She was wooden throughout but was quite fetching in her black bra and panties.

The detection angle was minimal with too long spend setting up red herrings which made the big reveal seemed rushed and unearned. The production wasn’t exactly lavish with the action minimal and stars non existant. There were the usual slices of web-fu, with a couple of key strokes answering all the questions and some very tame sex scenes which wouldn’t worry you if the vicar appeared midway through your guilty viewing.

Basically this is a ‘does what it says on the tin’ TV movie with nothing invested in the script or indeed production, leaving a half baked and unsatisfactory product. That said you will see worse - we won’t ; TV movies about computers are joining made for DVD werewolf films on our banned list!

Best Bit - Dress Try Ons
'W' rating 10/23

No.179 : Web of Lies (2009)

Web of Lies at the IMDB

A film so obscure now that I had to make my own screen grab of the title card. The only image I could find on the web was the ‘sexy’ one below - you can’t say we don’t give you the full nine yards here at the 100 W Movies Quest!

The film’s low profile is down to it being a TV movie and an awful one at that, but let’s check out that plot before slagging it off.

We open with a girl running through a city with her headphones on. She’s dressed in a hoodie so we don’t know if she’s a jogger or a mugger but she serves to give us some nice city shots which no doubt pleased the Montreal Tourist Board. The girl turns out to be our heroine, Abby, who on arriving at her apartment is surprised by an uninvited guest. It turns out to be a sexy surprise as it is her unreliable boyfriend, Josh.

The pair have some of that movie sex where they are wrapped in the sheets tighter than a pair of mummies before falling asleep. All is not well however as Josh uses the post coital lull to access Abby’s laptop and upload a programme. He leaves the next morning but is seemingly blown up in his car - I say 'seemingly' as the budget only stretched to having some flammable jelly set alight on the bonnet.

Being a trouper Abby returns to her work as a computer programmer for a security firm and manages to do a ‘hacking for thickies’ demonstration for some investors and indeed the slow witted viewers who have stayed on board this long. Her boss congratulates her on a job well done but her triumph is short lived when two FBI agents arrive to advise that Josh is a notorious hacker who seduces lady programmers to get into their systems and presumably, their pants.

Abby is worried that her kick ass programme may have been compromised and soon finds she has been set up in an account with $10 millions. Rather than run off with the cash she starts a long quest to figure out who she can trust and how she can restore her reputation. You see ‘Web of Lies’ is a clever title - it’s a pun on the internet or something!

This was a real effort of a film to watch with acting that would make a soap opera blush. It looked more like a film school effort than TV movie with some of the actors nothing of the kind. The comic relief assistant and the excitable boss were dreadful but the lady FBI agent topped the lot with  her complex and variously motivated character a mystery to all, including the viewer.

The film did have a few surprises, but so does a bad curry and some of the computer wizardry was patently ridiculous to anyone whose ever waited five minutes for Firefox too boot up. There was a decent stab at reassessing what had gone before with previously related events replayed in monochrome from a different character’s perspective to make you second guess the plot, but it didn’t work and seemed gimmicky at best.

The big scam which was original to anyone who’s never seen ‘Superman 3’ or ‘Office Space’ or basically any film involving computers was the old ‘fractions of pennies being shaved off’ routine but at least it did try to evolve beyond this. Sadly the expanded scam was basically stealing cash using a laptop, although efforts to clue the thickies in with demos involving coasters and sugar packets were used to muddy the waters somewhat.

You won’t know any of the leads and won’t remember them after this either. The actress playing Abby was a poor man’s Scarlett Johansson and she was offered no support from a feeble douche with floppy hair. If you are into watching films with a detached sense of irony ‘Web of Lies’ may do it for you, but for anyone who values each 90 minutes of their lives it’s definitely best avoided.

Best Bit : Hello Heads of Computer Conglomerates - this is a computer - Duh!
W Score 5/23