No Good Deed goes unpunished. Sort of like watching this movie. After having served five years for “voluntary manslaughter,” Colin Evans (Idris Elba) is denied parole because he may or may not be a serial killer responsible for “the disappearance of five young women.”
We’re told at the beginning that “The evidence necessary to try Evans … proved illusory;” consequently, “The DA’s office decided to settle for … the lesser manslaughter conviction.” Moreover, “No mention of Evans being the primary suspect in the disappearance and presumed death of the five young women was ever made at his manslaughter trial” (no mention is ever made either of whether young women stopped disappearing while Evans was incarcerated; that’s some piss-poor attention to detail right there).
And yet a parole board member tells Evans point blank, “There are five families outside who are hoping and praying that we do not set Colin Evans free.” Needless to say, their prayers are answered. Oh, and Evans just happens to be black.
On one hand, it would appear that Evans got railroaded. On the other, the opening Infodump tells us that Evans was “convicted of voluntary manslaughter for one of the most brutal murders in recent history.” First of all, was it manslaughter or murder? Because they’re not the same thing. Second, Evans is up for parole five years later, meaning he was sentenced to 15 for “the most brutal” whatever.
Now it sounds like he actually got off easy, but it’s a moot point either way. The first thing Evans does after escaping on the ride back to prison is kill his former fiancée Alexis (MILF Kate del Castillo. And by MILF I mean Mexican I’d Like to Fuck); before the credits roll Evans will have killed another woman and attempted to murder a third (plus the two corrections officers he had to dispatch to make his getaway. That’s right, only two dudes where keeping an eye on “one of the most feared men in the annals of state history”). Even if he isn’t the presumed serial killer (but really, who the hell else could it be?), Evans is certainly giving him a run for for his (blood) money.
Whether guilty or innocent, this guy shouldn’t be able to show his face anywhere in public; “Five years ago, Evans was one of the most wanted men in state history,” and even now his parole hearing is the top story on “News 25 at noon” (by the same token, his escape ought to be breaking news; however, coverage of this particular issue comes to an end once it has served its purpose of providing prefabricated exposition).
I mention this because that same evening (at least I assume it is the same day, based on the editing) Evans knocks on neglected stay-at-home mom Terri’s (Taraji P. Henson) door and asks to use her phone to call a tow truck, seeing as how he just accidentally crashed his car into a tree.
She’s hesitant at first, but eventually invites him, makes him tea, and has a glass of wine with him and her friend Meg (Leslie Bibb). Meg’s first reaction to Evan is also suspicion, but the fact remains that neither of these dumb bitches has any idea who this man is.
Maybe Terri has been too busy raising her two children practically by herself (her husband Jeffrey puts on a workaholic façade to disguise that he’s two-timing Terri) to watch the news or read a paper, rendering her unable to recognize the notorious escaped convict who is insane and/or stupid enough to introduce himself using his real first name. Improbable as that is, it’s not impossible.
Her ignorance, however, becomes virtually inexcusable when it’s revealed that Terri not only used to be a lawyer, but “was a prosecutor at the DA’s office.” Furthermore, “most of [her] cases were violence against women.” How could she possibly not be familiar with the infamous Colin Evans?
Sure, Terri lives in a different state; then again, that state is Georgia, which is right next to Tennessee (whence Evans hails). As it turns out, though, nobody in either state seems to be looking for Evans until Terri calls the police (and even then it’s just your average “a crazy man in my house [is] trying to kill me”).
Additionally, Alexis had been having an affair with Jeffrey (Henry Simmons), which you’d think would be the reason that Evans is targeting Terri (Evans found a message to Alexis that Jeffrey wrote on the back of a utility bill or some such paper that had his address on it).
But then, when I said that Evans had ‘accidentally’ crashed his car, I meant that it was a legitimate accident. It was raining (the second half of the movie takes place during a storm), Evans was distracted thinking back to the parole hearing, he swerved to avoid another car, lost control and veered off the road. In other words, a lot of what transpires in this film is all just a coincidence within a bigger coincidence.
This is such embarrassingly careless writing that even the Infinite Monkey would have done a better job. It’s the kind of story that not only screams ‘it was a dark and stormy night,’ but literally features a dark and stormy night. And we never even find out what happened to those poor five girls.