Missionary (2013)

You won't be disappointed!

A Disappointing Continuation

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

We have all seen Mormon missionaries spreading the word in their black pants and white shirt and tie. This movie starts off like a Lifetime thriller but ends up more in the horror genre. The heroine is estranged from her cheating hubby. She sleeps with a younger Mormon missionary who helps her kid with football. Turns out the clean cut innocent looking young man is a maniac who becomes obsessed with her when she decides to go back to her husband.The actress Dawn Olivieri seems a bit expressionless in her acting. The missionary played by Mitch Ryan is quite effective.It doesn't demonize the religion but it shows there can be wackos anywhere - don't let appearances fool you.Worth a watch.

Katherine is a struggling mother trying to create a better life for her and her son. She meets Elder Brock, a handsome Mormon missionary with a troubled past and they begin an incendiary love affair.Some might look at this and say it is disrespectful to the Mormon religion and its followers. Those people would be wrong. This is not in any way saying that Mormons are evil, but that a twisted person will use their faith in twisted ways. For me, this was very much in the same spirit as "The Stepfather" with Terry O'Quinn. Stepfathers are not bad, but they can be! The tone was just right, the tension was good. There was some dichotomy between what makes a family for one person versus another. This certainly deserves another watch and I would recommend it to others.

"Missionary" revolves around conflicts that appear beneath seemingly friendly and interesting relationships, only that nothing is what is seems on surface.I'm usually willing to give latitude to smaller productions that feature a B-level cast, and that was the attitude I had when I saw the movie. The results were mixed.There is some decent acting on this movie, and when they have good text they can put some above average character performance. The major problem of this film is that writing is very inconsistent. The story oscillates between some good and believable scenes, with others that let you down by their incoherence, lack of continuity or just plain 'straight from cliché handbook'. A couple passages are extremely lame, almost giving the impression two separate writes at odds with each other developed the story. At the end of the movie, when closing credits come, there is this feeling that the director wasted an overachieving cast (relatively to their league) with bad text.

Not sure if there is a pun intended with the title of the movie, but one thing is for sure, this is a thriller that can be seen in the tradition of "Fatal Attraction". Kind of like "Fatherly Attraction" then if you're not too offended by that word play. The thrill aspect of the movie is pretty easy to pick up on and I'm sure almost everyone will know where this is heading quite early.So it is the journey that is interesting and the "players" involved in the journey that will get our attention. With Dawn O. we you get not only a good actress, but a very beautiful one too. Which makes the temptation part even more believable. Unfortunately not all parts of the story are as believable and it does run into more and more clichés (especially when it is reaching the climax - no pun intended).Still if you like thrillers, you will be entertained enough