Runtime: 84 minutes
Release Date: September 12, 2014
Rating: PG-13
Director: Sam Miller
Colin is a serial killer stuck in prison and denied parole. Unhappy with the board's decision, he escapes from prison and goes back to see his ex-girlfriend. After taunting her a bit, he reveals that he knows she had a new boyfriend and that he isn't happy. He brutally kills her before taking off again.
Terry is a former lawyer who defended women against their boyfriends and husbands before settling down with her husband Jeffrey and becoming a stay at home mom of two kids. Though the two once had a good marriage, they've had problems recently. She shares some of her troubles with her best friend Meg, who makes it clear that she doesn't approve of her friend's husband.
Though Terry urges Jeffrey to stay home for the weekend, he plans to go away with his dad and promises that the two will go away together soon. After Jeffrey leaves and Meg makes plans to come back later that night. Terry makes dinner and tries to go on with her life. In the middle of a bad storm, she hears a knock on the door and finds Colin on the other side.
Claiming that he lives a few streets over and had a car accident, he asks to use her phone and offers to wait outside. Terry, feeling bad for him, brings him the phone and then lets him into the house. So desperate for companionship, she offers him a drink, gives him a clean shirt to wear, and cleans his wounds. As the two grow closer throughout the night, Colin slowly begins to reveal his dark side and reveals what made him show up on her doorstep.
The trailers for No Good Deed made it look like one of those taunt thrillers, but the film itself is barely a step above a Lifetime television movie. As someone who has seen so many of those movies, I'm actually pretty shocked that Idris Elba even agreed to do it after reading the script.
Terry starts out as just another bored and frustrated housewife. Once Colin arrives and she begins telling him about her past, it's almost laughable. She goes on and on about how she helped all these women and how she hates abusive men. It eventually reaches the point where you want to just scream at the television about why she doesn't realize the same type of guy is right in front of her.
Since this is a PG-13 movie, there's really no violence either. It's one of those movies where you see him pick up a girl by the throat, the camera pans away, and then she's dead. There is a scene where someone gets a shovel to the head that made me jump slightly, but then it's right back to a lack of horror or gore.
Elba is pretty good in the movie, but let's face it, that man is good in everything he does. Sadly for him, he just can't carry this movie all by himself or make it better than the script. The only way I would recommend it is if you're a big Elba fan or you love movie of the week/women in peril television movies.
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