Don’t mess with an Oscar winner reduced to direct-to-DVD rubbish.
“While She Was Out,” released April 28 after skipping domestic theaters, casts Kim Basinger as a suburban wife and mother chased by a quartet of thugs.
Said thugs never knew what him ‘em.
Nor will audiences expecting a serviceable thriller in the “Death Sentence/Death Wish” mold.
Basinger plays Della, who spends her days caring for her adorable twins and nights dealing with her combustible hubby (Craig Sheffer, playing a one-note role like a third grader on the recorder).
Della is forced to go out on Christmas Eve to fetch some wrapping paper, and her lonely trek to the shopping mall hints that the film may have more on its mind than generic thrills.
A disinterested coffee shop employee purposely misspells Della’s name, and our heroine’s heart sinks when she watches a good father and son bond over a last-minute purchase.
But Della gets mixed up with four goons in the parking lot led by their scruffy ringleader (Lucas Haas).
Soon, Della is running for her life with only her car’s red tool box for protection. But you’d be surprised how handy household tools can be when you’re life’s in danger.
First time writer/director Susan Montford piles on the character details early and often, only to abandon that battle plan once Della takes flight.
Nothing wrong with anchoring a thriller with character flourishes, but Montford proves a poor choreographer of chase sequences. Numerous gaps in logic don’t help, nor does the generic posse out for Della’s blood – a UN-style blend of nationalities led by an overmatched Haas.
The film wraps with an alleged shocker, but by then Della’s transformation from victim to Mrs. Dirty Harry is complete – and utterly uninvolving.
(Photo: Oscar winner Kim Basinger does double duty as star and producer of the recent thriller “While She Was Out.” Anchor Bay Entertainment)
Related posts:
on 
on 
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Sounds like it would be a winner with the bitter women demographic. I expect this violent gurl power genre to become huge in the next 20 years. Males are now only 42 percent of college students and graduate with less regularity than women. The exception being in the science and technology majors, but that is being attended to by the government as we speak.
The members of the newly ascendant matriarchy will be looking for macha entertainment of this type, so I expect we’ll be hearing more from Ms. Montford and her progeny.
I passed over this at Blockbuster the other day. Sounds like I made the wise choice with my $5. I know we always have to dodge those cursed multicultural gangs terrorizing our malls.
I had a sneaking suspicion this would be a diamond in the Blockbuster rought. Not quite. Basinger remains a vision, though.
I believe Basinger’s descent into the DVD bins has more to do with her age than her talent. Plus she’s had more important problems to deal with, like screening her child’s voice mails for an irate Alec Baldwin.
This picture is the second work based on an excellent short story by Ed Bryant. But I’d rather see the half-hour adaptation on the cable show “The Hidden Room” that starred Stephanie Zimbalist. Was shown and gone on a network I couldn’t get here before I even heard about it, and it isn’t available on DVD. The half-hour format would fit the story much better. That’s one of the problems with adapting fiction to movies; a short story is too short and requires additions, a novel is too long and fistfulls of plot are abandoned from each chapter. Filmmakers should look for novellas to adapt; they are the perfect length. Novellas like James’ “The Turn of the Screw” fit a movie hand-in-glove.