Domestic Disturbance

Movie Title: Domestic Disturbance
Official Website (it might still work): Domestic Disturbance
Rating (out of 10): 4
Reviewed By: Michael Stevens
Buy the: Video/DVD \| Soundtrack
The Review:

Mister Saturday night himself is back in a thriller, which follows a long line of thrillers for John Travolta. Remember when he was considered a second rate actor making those Look Who’s Talking movies? Well after that he did that Pulp Fiction movie that got his career back on track. Recently he’s been sticking to action and drama like Face/Off, A Civil Action, The General’s Daughter, and most recently Swordfish (we’ll just skip over that whole sci-fi debacle). I think I’ve gotten a little off track since there really is no point to this brief synopsis of John Travolta’s career. So now we’ll talk about the movie Domestic Disturbance.

The film starts off innocently enough in the city of Southport that is located in Maryland on the Chesapeake. In this town there is a wooden boat builder by the name of Frank Morrison (Travolta) who has a 11 year-old son and an ex-wife in town. His ex-wife Susan (Teri Polo from Meet the Parents) is about to re-marry to a rich newcomer named Rick (Vince Vaughn, The Cell), which the kid Danny (Matthew O’Leary) isn’t to happy about it. Well the wedding day comes and everything is fine until an old pal of Rick’s shows up. This Ray (Steve Buscemi from Armageddon & Final Fantasy) character seems to be bugging Rick and making him nervous. Here we learn that Ray and Rick were partners in crime, and Ray has come to collect his share of the loot. Well of course Rick doesn’t want to give Ray any of the money, so he gets rid of Ray. Problem is, Danny saw Rick kill Ray and then dispose of the body. So then Danny goes to his dad and the police about the incident, but nobody believes him at first. This is because Danny has had a troubled past since the divorce, so everyone just thinks he is trying to mess things up. Well eventually Frank believes his boy and starts nosing around to find evidence, which causes Rick to start getting defensive since he doesn’t want to go to jail.

Travolta & company are directed by Harold Becker (Mercury Rising) in the film. And frankly he may have wanted to do more with the film to make it more suspenseful. Other cast members were Chris Ellis, Nick Loren, Sara Graves, Leland Jones, Susan Lloyd, James Lashly, and even more, but I’ll stop here. The screenwriters were Lewis Colick and William Comanor.

The acting by everyone was fine, nothing spectacular, though Teri Polo could have done a better job. The plot though just didn’t have enough near misses, surprises, or suspense to make it a good thriller. So for the rating, it gets four couches out of ten. Just another middle-of-the-road Hollywood flick. Bye.