The story unfolds as a well-off (or so it seems) woman is fishing with her son, and a strong bond between the two is shown. Although this is brief, this sets the stage for one of the most thrilling missing children’s movie I have seen in a while.
Ashley Judd plays Libby Parsons who is married to Nick, an art dealer that is financially in trouble but hiding it to the world. They portray a happily married couple that is living the high life. Surprising his wife with a special present (a sailboat), he tricks Libby into a weekend alone on this boat. He is brilliant in never letting on that he is setting her up for his “murder”.
Libby awakens to find blood on her robe, and a trail of blood leading up to the top deck where she conveniently finds a table knife also covered in blood. Here enters the coast guard police with Libby holding the bloody knife and looking suspicious although she is in shock of the whole implications.
After a while, her husband’s body cannot be found, and he is declared dead, and she is charged with his murder. Her motive? She was the beneficiary of his 2 million dollar life insurance policy. Libby spent time in a woman’s prison living for her monthly visits with her son and the sparse phone calls she would receive from him. Her “friend”, Angela Green, who was keeping her son for her suddenly disappears.
Libby is panicking about her missing son. She tricks the secretary of the life insurance policy to verify her new mailing address which is in another state altogether. She tracks Angela to this number and demands to hear her son. Angela concedes and lets Matty talk to his mother, but something unexpected happens. Nick comes home, and Matty yells t”Daddy!” as he comes through the doorway. Libby is in disbelief but she suddenly realizes what has happened. She has been setup. Her “friend” had betrayed her.
By the next morning, the telephone number she had traced Matty to had been disconnected, and her son was once again missing. One of Libby’s prison mates who was a former lawyer told her about a federal law called “Double Jeopardy” where a person cannot be tried on the same thing more than once. She told Libby to serve her time, track Nick down, and kill him because there was no way she could go to jail for killing him twice. After all, she had already served time for killing him.
Libby waited six years before she was released to a halfway home under the careful eye of former law professor, now parole office, Travis Lehman, played by Tommy Lee Jones. Libby still manages to track the last known where about of Angela Green, who had since married her husband and assumed a new last name of Ryder.
Libby escapes her parole officer, and receives some funding from her mother to track down her faithless husband and get her son back. Appearing at the house she traced her “friend”, husband, and son living at, she approaches the home only to find that Angela had been “accidentally” killed in a gas stove leak and her husband and son had once again disappeared.
Remembering his penchant for a certain painter’s work in a specific time period, she tracks her husband to Louisiana (who has once again changed his name) where he is now selling art and owns a hotel. Libby follows Nick to one of his auctions and bids on his paintings. Libby is the highest bidder, and he is most definitely surprised to find his wife standing in front of him demanding her son. Trying to bide his time, he tries to smooth over his betrayal, but Libby is not fooled. She demands to see Matty, but has to cut this session short due to seeing her pursuer, Travis, hot on her tail. She had to disappear quickly.
She contacts her husband the next day and tells him to bring her son to a site seeing attraction where there would be a lot of people. Nick, now Jonathan Devereaux, pays a young man to impersonate his son and lure his wife to a secluded part of the cemetery (the site attraction) and smacks her head into a concrete tomb.
Libby awakens to find herself trapped inside a casket (yes, along with a dead person) and instead of truly freaking out like I would have done, she used the gun she had stolen from Travis to shoot the hinges off the casket and escape.
There are many twists and turns, narrow escapes, excitement, and finger nail clawing moments in this movie, and I do not want to tell how it ends. I thought this was an excellent movie that kept me wondering how Libby Parsons was going to get out of trouble time and time again in hopes of reuniting with her son.
*** Statistics ***
Released: 1999
Director: Bruce Beresford
Stars:
Libby Parsons: Ashley Judd
Travis Lehman: Tommy Lee Jones
Nick: Bruce Greenwood
Matty Parsons (Age 4): Benjamin Weir
Bobby Long: Jay Brazeau
Nick Parsons/Simon Ryder/Jonathan Devereaux: Bruce Greenwood
Rudy: John MacLaren III
Warren: Ed Evanko
Angie Green/Angela Ryder: Annabeth Gish
Availability: VHS and DVD Dolby Digital 5:1 surround formats.
Framed for murdering her husband, a woman escapes from prison and plunges into a desperate fight for justice, survival and revenge.More at HotMovieSale.com
Director Bruce Beresford's thriller stars Ashley Judd as Libby Parsons a young woman with a seemingly happy marriage and a prosperous life. While on a...More at Family Video
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