A young man caught up in some "ex-gay" therapy organization asks PI Donald Strachey to find someone, slams a check in his hand for $5000 then winds up dead from an apparent overdose before he can tell the detective who he's looking for. Strachey suspects foul play and investigates the charismatic leader of the local anti-gay therapy group to see if they had something to do with the kid's death. Sure enough, secrets are exposed and more death comes and clues pile up and a little luck helps Donald in the end.
I wish I could say I loved this little murder mystery, but "Shock to the System" is one of those projects that could have been so damn good in the hands of people who really cared. And I'm not referring to the actors. Chad Allen gives a fine, sometimes heartbreaking performance as Strachey. He's given able backup by Sebastian Spence as his life-partner and Nelson Wong as his new secretary with an attitude about his title. Even Morgan Fairchild does nicely with a thankless role.
But director Ron Oliver and writer Ron McGee offer up such perfunctory work, and cinematographer C. Kim Miles lights everything at night so minimally that you can't see half of what's going on, you wind up with incoherent shots and second rate staging and a plot that has things happen because they have to happen at that point for the story to move along. I know this is supposed to be a noir-ish flick, with nods to "The Maltese Falcon" and "The Big Sleep" and "Out of the Past" and all that, but it's done without any sense of style, meaning or even a hint of passion to it. Compare the plots of those great movies to this one, and it comes across as written by a 13 year old.
From here be spoilers so read not further if you don't want to know.
Consider the murder of Larry, who was helping Strachey's client, Paul Hale. The guy's been invisible for days. Strachey can't find him. Nobody's seen him. But finally he surfaces in a place where it would be hard to get to him. He has just enough time to fill Strachey in on what was going on and drop an important clue when the lights go out. Strachey goes looking to see what's up, pistol drawn. And the killer kills Larry then has a shootout with Strachey and gets away. It wasn't just clumsily written and staged, it was absurd. How could the killer know Larry was there unless Stachey lead them there? How would the killer know Strachey would go the wrong way down the corridor to give said killer a chance to kill the kid? And if the killer DIDN'T know Strachey was there, how did they know to be there at the exact right time to find Larry? None of this is explained in the end. In fact, the final explanation makes no logical sense, not even when dealing with a warped mind. It was nearly insulting.
BUT...and this is a big one...the script does delve somewhat into the question of ex-gay therapy and its philosophical and moral meaning. And the questions such people can raise, even in a relatively well-adjusted gay man -- like what would life had been like if I hadn't been gay? For raising those issues and for the lead actors, I give it a 7...which is above average, but it really could have been so much better if the director and writer and DP had really cared.
I wish I could say I loved this little murder mystery, but "Shock to the System" is one of those projects that could have been so damn good in the hands of people who really cared. And I'm not referring to the actors. Chad Allen gives a fine, sometimes heartbreaking performance as Strachey. He's given able backup by Sebastian Spence as his life-partner and Nelson Wong as his new secretary with an attitude about his title. Even Morgan Fairchild does nicely with a thankless role.
But director Ron Oliver and writer Ron McGee offer up such perfunctory work, and cinematographer C. Kim Miles lights everything at night so minimally that you can't see half of what's going on, you wind up with incoherent shots and second rate staging and a plot that has things happen because they have to happen at that point for the story to move along. I know this is supposed to be a noir-ish flick, with nods to "The Maltese Falcon" and "The Big Sleep" and "Out of the Past" and all that, but it's done without any sense of style, meaning or even a hint of passion to it. Compare the plots of those great movies to this one, and it comes across as written by a 13 year old.
From here be spoilers so read not further if you don't want to know.
Consider the murder of Larry, who was helping Strachey's client, Paul Hale. The guy's been invisible for days. Strachey can't find him. Nobody's seen him. But finally he surfaces in a place where it would be hard to get to him. He has just enough time to fill Strachey in on what was going on and drop an important clue when the lights go out. Strachey goes looking to see what's up, pistol drawn. And the killer kills Larry then has a shootout with Strachey and gets away. It wasn't just clumsily written and staged, it was absurd. How could the killer know Larry was there unless Stachey lead them there? How would the killer know Strachey would go the wrong way down the corridor to give said killer a chance to kill the kid? And if the killer DIDN'T know Strachey was there, how did they know to be there at the exact right time to find Larry? None of this is explained in the end. In fact, the final explanation makes no logical sense, not even when dealing with a warped mind. It was nearly insulting.
BUT...and this is a big one...the script does delve somewhat into the question of ex-gay therapy and its philosophical and moral meaning. And the questions such people can raise, even in a relatively well-adjusted gay man -- like what would life had been like if I hadn't been gay? For raising those issues and for the lead actors, I give it a 7...which is above average, but it really could have been so much better if the director and writer and DP had really cared.