Review of Dead On

Dead On (1994)
5/10
Mile High Murder Club
13 December 2004
***SPOILERS*** Stylish yet very overdone movie about two people meeting by chance, or was it, in a bar and finding out that they'ed like to have their spouses killed.

Obvious remake of the 1951 Alfred Hitchock classic "Strangers on a Train" in fact it's mentioned by one of the persons Erin Davenport, Shari Shattuck,who came up with the very unoriginal plan. Erin wants to have her brutal and abusive husband Dexter, David Ackroyd,murdered by her new found lover Ted Beaumont, Matt McCoy, an airline pilot. Ted also wan't to have his boss and pain in the neck wife Marla, Tracy Scoggins,put out of his and her life as well.

Erin wan't Ted to do in Dexter and in return she'll murder Marla with the police not being able to connect each other, Erin & Ted, to the murders like in the film "Strangers on a Train"! As if the police and nobody else didn't see the movie and doesn't know that such a murder plan is possible.

There's far more to the movie "Dead On" but thats saved for the last ten minutes or so of the film. It makes the movie even more ridicules then it already was up to then. The master plan seems to go on schedule as Marla disappears and there's drops of her blood found in her suite of apartments. The police suspect Ted as the killer but he has an air-tight alibi for where he was when Marla disappeared but Erin's husband is still alive and kicking. Ted who was against this whole plan now feels trapped by having gone along with his wife, Marla, being killed by Erin but is up in the air about killing Erin's husband Dexter.

Ted sets up his elaborate plan to murder Dexter and make his getaway to perfection. What Ted doesn't realize is that Erin has made a major plot change in her "Strangers on a Train" murder scenario and in it's not only her husband Dexter but her lover Ted that will end up being the odd men out, both dead and alive.

The ending wasn't that much of a surprise since it was easy to see it coming if you realized who was really behind this convoluted and contrived murder plot. When it surfaced it only proved that in the movies everything can happen even the totally unbelievable.

The film "Dead On" has an epilogue as if it were a true story with the audience being told what happened to those who were involved and arrested in the movies outlandish crime, in reality the film was total fiction.
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