The makers of this direct-to-video release thought the world was ready for a thriller about an insurance actuary. They thought wrong. The film premiered on Showtime and then was released on home video.
Richard Ramsay (Andrew McCarthy) is a hotshot Hartford, Connecticut, insurance theorist who originated the proposition that freak accidents can usually be blamed on their victims. As industry policy, this principle has made Ramsay a rich man, and a target for at least one customer shafted by his
improbable probability curve.
The trouble begins when he is contacted by Belsen (John Evans), an extortionist who reports that Ramsay's wife Sarah (Kate McNeil) has hired him to kill her husband for $10,000. He offers not to kill Ramsay for an additional $30,000. Disbelieving, Ramsay nonetheless meets with Belsen several times
in order to establish his wife's innocence. Soon Sarah mysteriously disappears, and turns up dead. Belsen is shot as he meets with Ramsay; but not by Ramsay, but by some mysterious hidden gunner.
Local detective Gil Farrand (Paul Sorvino) opens an investigation. Meanwhile, Ramsay tries to put his life back together with the help of luscious "family friend" Leslie (Connie Britton) and his kinky Japanese-American business pal Abe (Stan Egi). Sarah's killer remains unknown; suspicion begins
to fall on Ramsay himself as his paranoia grows. When a private detective (Shawn Lawrence) hired by Ramsay is murdered, Farrand decides to charge our hero formally.
His time running out, Ramsay learns that Farrand's wife was killed in a freak automobile-train accident years before. Researching the case, he discovers that his "Ramsay Curve" was the basis for his company's decision to blame Farrand's wife for the accident. At the last second, he foils Farrand's
plot to avenge his wife by killing Ramsay's son (Sean Dick), shooting the policeman in the process.
ESCAPE CLAUSE has the feel of a film shoot with several key pages of script missing. To be successful, this kind of thriller needs to be tautly crafted. Instead, producer-screenwriter Danilo Bach substitutes portent for suspense, and red herrings for depth. Both he and director Brian
Trenchard-Smith seem defeated by the demands of the genre.
For his part, Andrew McCarthy makes for a particularly dull lead actor. Serviceable in light doses (e.g., PRETTY IN PINK), he otherwise seems capable of three variations on a kind of sulky self-seriousness (FRESH HORSES and LESS THAN ZERO are likewise avoidable). Intimations of Ramsay's
psychological complexity--of being overworked or genuinely paranoid--are either sabotaged by Bach's desultory treatment, or rendered uninvolving by McCarthy's faux-James Dean poutiness. Even actuaries need better representation than this. (Violence, nudity, sexual situations, profanity.) leave a comment
