Well Deserved Praise

Don't Believe the Hype

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

(Some Spoilers) Haunted by her father's, who was convicted of murdering his boss, execution when she was ten years old crime reporter Nikki Barrington, Isabella Hoffmann, had become over the last twenty years a crusader against the death penalty.Getting the chance to interview convicted murder Tyler Nash, James Wilder, just two weeks before his scheduled execution Nikki not only decides to make his case a Cause Caleb she also falls in love with the boyishly handsome and innocent looking death row inmate. This leads Nikki to go so far as testify in Tyler's behalf in being the mystery woman who was with him on that fateful night in August five years ago. That's when Tyler was arrested for the murder of local Marshall Falls resident Cecilia Flowers, Jocelyn Clarke, which he's about to pay for with his life.Despite a perjury charge hanging over her head Nikki is so sincere and honest in lying about her being with Tyler at the time of Miss. Flowers murder that the jury, in a second trial due to her new testimony, finds the once convicted killer innocent of her murder.Now Nikki's live-in boyfriend Tyler starts to shed his image as the innocent looking as well as poetic, he can really put his emotions and feeling down on a piece paper, young man. The sweet and loving young man soon becomes a quick tempered psycho. Nikki who's still very much in love with Tyler is also hurt by finding a poem he wrote exclusively for her, about ripples in a pond, was something he wrote to a fan of his, a women prison pen pal, months before she ever met him!Tyler also shows his very violent side when, after being attacked first, he cold-cocks the late Cecilia Flowers boyfriend and a pal of his who pick a fight with him at a local bar "The Blue Moon Tavern". The very place where Cecilia was found murdered in the bars parking lot five years ago.All this leads to Marshall Falls D.A Mitch Clarke, Jerry Wasserman, who at first successfully prosecuted the Flowers murder case check up on Tylers, a professional race car driver, whereabouts before the Flowers killing. It turns out that the now freed Tyler Nash was at Daytona Florida, for the Datoyna 500 car race, the very same time another young woman was found murdered there! The woman was killed under the very same circumstances that Ceiclia was!Tyler now getting crazy and paranoid because of the local police putting the heat on him goes wacko in an attempt to skip town after D.A Clarke told him not to. Thus showing by his guilty action that he may well have murdered Cecilia as well as the young women back in Daytona! What makes things even worse for Tyler, if things wren't bad enough already , another young women is found murdered outside of town on the beach at Cannan Point! With him not having an alibi were he was, when she was murdered, Tyler now becomes the prime suspect in her murder as well!****MAJOR SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT ON**** Well you'll have to see the rest of the movie, or story, to find out just what this Tyler guy is really all about. The last ten minutes of "Touched by a Killer" is so strange and mind-boggling that it comes across almost surreal. Nikki in her taking it upon herself to get Tyler freed in fact set off a number of events that had Cecilia's real killer resurface. This had at the same time have him zero in on her and Nikki friend Liza, Erin Gray, who in fact had no idea who he was which didn't prevent the psycho killer from trying to murder them!The biggest surprise of all in the movie, besides the killers identity,is that it was Cecilia's real killer who's testimony put Tyler Nash on death row in the first place. On top of all that he also murdered the person, who's body was never found by the police, who's testimony could very well have proved him innocent! Now he was going to do the job, as judge jury and executioner, himself not only on Tyler but his, on and off, girlfriend Nikki Barrington!

I kept hoping this movie would get better, but it only got worse. Although the acting is okay, the script is stupid, manipulative, unbelievable, and clichéd. I just shook my head in disgust at the climax. I've seen the same climax a hundred times, maybe a thousand. The good guy and bad guy struggle on the ground. Then there's the cliché of a knife just beyond the reach of their fingers. One of them gets the knife. They continue struggling with the knife between them out of sight. Then we get the cliché of wondering who got killed. One man gets stabbed and the two men roll apart, each acting like he could be the dead one. Then we get the cliché of the bad guy who we thought was dead coming back to life and attacking again. Then he's on top of the lady strangling her. He decides to kill her with the knife instead. Then we get one of the most-used clichés ever. As the killer brings the knife down to kill the lady we hear a gun shot at the last possible instant and the killer falls over dead. The good guy had crawled and gotten the gun, and of course shot it with perfect aim at the last possible moment. Of course there were lots of other clichés leading up to the final flurry -- the killer disabling the car in the driveway, the killer cutting the phone line, the killer hiding in the house. What a waste of a couple of hours.

I'm not a big fan of afternoon Lifetime movies, but in this case, I'm glad it was on! Not all of the characters were well rounded, but JAMES WILDER'S performance was excellent - it moved me. The idea behind the movie and some of the questions it brought to surface were very interesting and deeper than I expected. I think it is well worth watching just for the realms of our conscience that it delves into.

I must disagree with the last reviewer. Yes I concede it was trashy but it was well acted and had some tense dramatic moments. It passed the time for me.Erin Gray looks fantastic for her age!!