An Eye for an Eye
Celebrated mystery writer, Tess Thorne (Maria Bello - Prisoners) is heading home following a speaking engagement with some of her fans when she suffers a flat tyre on a back road. When a stranger pulls up and offers to change her tyre for her she is extremely grateful. That is until the man not only hits her but then repeatedly rapes her before dragging her body in to a drainage pipe, leaving her for dead. Having come around in the dark Tess manages to make it home and rather than reporting what happened to the police, going to the hospital or telling her friends she cleans herself up and bides her time. It is then that she sets about using her skills as a mystery writer to not only work out who raped her and whether he was planning it all along but also a way of getting revenge with out being caught. The question is will Tess like everything she discovers?
"Big Driver" is a curious movie because one side of it is extremely simple and it is for me the dominant side as writer Tess decides to use her skills as a writer to seek revenge on the man who raped her. And this side of the movie doesn't hold back when it comes to the violence with a rape scene which whilst not as in your face as some more notorious rape/revenge movies is still a lot more graphic than you might expect and can deal with from a movie which lets face it was made for TV. But at the same time it is this side which is not only obvious and obviously twisted but has a playing loose with reality aspect about it which you get from made for TV movies.
Now before I get to the other side it has to be said that "Big Driver" works because it stars Maria Bello and she gives the character of Tess a whole lot of detail. It means that whilst some scenes feel a bit too far fetched the depth Bello puts in to her character's reactions and how she responds to things certainly keep you involved. On top of that there is also Olympia Dukakis who made me smile in the same way I use to smile when ever I watched Angela Lansbury in "Murder, She Wrote".
But then there is that other side to "Big Driver" and unfortunately it is a side which I can't really talk about because it is the side which gives "Big Driver" its more original aspect. Some of this I have to say is quite obvious because of the way "Big Driver" has been directed with shall we say not the most subtle of touches. But it does keep you interested when the obvious nature of the rape/revenge storyline becomes too familiar.
What this all boils down to is that "Big Driver" is most importantly entertaining and much of that is down to the skill of the actors. But as a movie adaptation of a Stephen King story, well I have certainly come across better.