Surprisingly brutal for a network TV presentation, this crime drama is saddled with a central domestic father-daughter dilemma that isn't nearly as engrossing as the ritual murder case that the father and daughter detectives must solve. Dampened by the overrated "sincerity" of star Dana
Delany, DEAD TO RIGHTS occasionally transcends its serial killer subgenre.
At loggerheads with her father, Sgt. Donato (Charles Bronson), over the mystery-shrouded death of her brother, Tommy, superior officer Dina Donato (Dana Delany) doesn't leap at the chance to add her dad to her task force to solve a string of nun slayings. Unable to flush the smug killer out, the
baffled detectives follow various leads, including an addict with a grudge against one of the victims. Dina is wracked with guilt when her pregnant sister-in-law, Judy (Jenette Goldstein), is fatally shot in the line of duty. Dina eventually narrows her focus to two likely suspects: Kim Lyle (Ian
Patrick Williams), a cross-dressing photographer, and Russ Loring (Xander Berkeley), a yuppie broker.
While her associates concentrate on Lyle, Dina checks out Loring, and Sgt. Donato questions Loring's over-protective mother (Juliana McCarthy) about her son's broken engagement to a woman who intended to enter a convent. Rattling Loring's cage only emboldens this serial killer to taunt Dina and to
stab his wife, Andrea (Kim Weeks), when she confronts him with damaging evidence. Cagily misleading Loring by claiming the police have arrested another man, Dina stalls for time at Loring's apartment until a search warrant is issued. When critically injured Andrea taps from the bedroom for help,
Loring accosts Dina and drags her to the building's roof. There, Sgt. Donato fatally shoots nun-killer Loring. A grateful Dina can now forgive her father for his revelation about covering up the facts of her brother's drug-related death to spare the family.
DEAD TO RIGHTS captures the gritty details of a grinding police investigation. Its false starts and liberating breakthroughs make viewers feel as if they're really in the crimefighting trenches. Although the murderer's identity is revealed early, the suspense stems from witnessing the interlocking
of such puzzle pieces as hidden motive, shifting modus operandi, and the hunt for a chink in the madman's psychological armor. Would that the trumped-up father-daughter conflict had the same dramatic force. Every time the screenplay cuts away to another bitter exchange between "Donato and
Daughter" (the film's original title), the audience gets soggy from the soapsuds. Fortunately, the maniacal slayer is memorably limned by Xander Berkeley as a mega-arrogant sociopath who feels justified in symbolically murdering over and over again the woman who rejected him for God. In a
brilliantly written and acted scene, we also meet the grotesquely indulgent mother who spawned this monster. Thanks to such grace notes, DEAD TO RIGHTS locks in viewer interest as it humanizes both cops and victims and makes the nun-terminator's motive both reprehensible and comprehensible.
(Graphic violence, profanity, adult situations.) leave a comment
