Taken

Brad Armstrong and his co-author/star Stormy Daniels took this project quite seriously and did a fine job, combining soap opera and what used to be called (in the days of Rosalind Russell and Irene Dunne) a "woman's picture" with a thriller as skilfully as most mainstream directors. However, relying on Randy Spears in a key role was a big boner (pun intended, of course).

With very effective use of short scenes to carry the plot forward, separated by fadeouts, we have a compelling saga of wife Stormy set adrift when her husband Eric Masterson goes missing suddenly during a routine bathroom stop while the couple is out dining with best friends Brad and Eva Angelina.

Her world is turned upside down, as the police are no help in finding him, and soon she's as depressed as can be. Her sister-in-law, well-played by an actress unknown to me - Ava Ramon - can not cheer her up, and ultimately she enters Group Therapy for grief counseling at her local church to try and break out of her deep funk.

Enter Spears, on the surface a seeming nice guy with his own similar tale of woe, and after an old-fashioned S.O.L.I. romance montage they become an item.

The plot thickens and goes through several exceptionally engrossing twists and turns with the return over a year later of her missing hubby, but Spears is so transparently a heavy that his miscasting really hurts the key scenes that resolve the story. Brad and Stormy cannot be faulted in their execution of the material, but playing of Spears is a no-win situation.

It's unfortunate, because this is one of those Brad projects that earned him a reputation for breaking down the lines between mainstream and Adult content, a goal that Stormy as director (see her latest: Unbridled as prime example) has continued to pursue.