Losing Faith with the Law
When Christy Palmer (Emily Tennant - Daughter for Sale) witnesses a man being murdered in the woodlands she ends up running for her life and making it to the police station, where she not only gives a statement but picks out the killer, Karl Harvey (Rick Ravanello - Dangerous Company), from a line up. But when Harvey's smart lawyer gets him out on bail Christy and her mother Sarah (Kristy Swanson - Storm Rider) find themselves the victims of some threatening behaviour. With the police unable to stop the threats, and with there being a suspicion that there is a leak within the police force, Sarah takes matters in to her own hands and takes Christy far away to Oregon without telling anyone where they have gone, with the police fearing she has been kidnapped.
I am going to leave the synopsis there but will say that it barely covers the first half of "Driven Underground" and there is more drama in the second half with Christy and Sarah starting a new life in Oregon whilst living their lives looking over their shoulders in fear of Karl finding them. What his means if that "Driven Underground" is a movie of two halves with the first half setting up this nightmare situation where Sarah and Christy find themselves in danger from a killer. And then there appears to be a crooked cop within the police with the camera focusing on Lochlyn Munro as Detective Boyce as he constantly acts suspicious, making calls in private and hiding evidence in his pocket. Although with it being obvious, almost to the point of feeling a bit inept of the director for making it so obvious, you wonder whether Detective Boyce is a red herring.
As for the second half, well that is where "Driven Underground" reminded me of the Julia Roberts movie "Sleeping with the Enemy" as we have Christy and Sarah cautiously trying to create a new life for themselves in a new town whilst always looking over their shoulders just in case they need to make a quick getaway. As such the single Sarah unsurprisingly meets a nice guy who wants to help. The thing is that whilst I mentioned "Sleeping with the Enemy" "Driven Underground" reminded me of a lot of other movies which feature a similar storyline of someone running away from danger and then having to try and keep a low profile in case trouble ever tracks them down.
What is clear is that the producers have pulled in quite a few regulars from the world of TV movies such as Kristy Swanson, Emily Tennant, Lochlyn Munro, Rick Ravanello, Sebastian Spence, Rachel Hayward and Lucia Walters to name just a few of those familiar faces appearing in "Driven Underground". What is kind of amusing is all these actors seem to have crossed paths before in other TV movies, some times as business partners other times romantically and occasionally as enemies, so it is fun to have so many together in one movie even if their characters are little more than cliches.
What this all boils down to is that "Driven Underground" made me smile mainly because of the number of regular TV movie actors it features. But beyond that there is nothing special about this made for TV thriller which is pretty steroetypical when it comes to the way the story progresses.
