Stunden der Gewalt (TV Movie 1997)

Stunden der Gewalt: Directed by Kenneth Fink. With Gail O’Grady, Amy Pietz, Michael Riley, Emily Hampshire. A crisis line worker searches for an abused woman who calls the hotline proclaiming her revenge against her abusive ex-husband. In a second story, a teen who declined help from the crisis center is attacked by her boyfriend.

“Gail Ou0026#39;Grad stars as a housewife who, earlier, sent her husband to prison for beating her. But when he gets out, he picks up right where he left off, terrorizing his family to the point where sheu0026#39;s resolved to kill him, only to get a little liquid courage in order to do the job, but then calling a crisis center and talking to someone who ends up willing to do something about it.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eIu0026#39;ve loved Gail Ou0026#39;Grady since I first saw her in u0026quot;Celtic Pride,u0026quot; and Iu0026#39;ve seen her in television episodes like a judge in u0026quot;Boston Legal,u0026quot; and a housewife not too unlike her character here, in u0026quot;Desperate Housewives.u0026quot; The plot for this film was a good one, especially for its time, when this kind of family problems was, basically, still an unspoken evil outside the home. The real problem thatu0026#39;s stated here, in my mind, is how a court order is really nothing, because she still loves her husband in a sick way to where she doesnu0026#39;t turn him in the instant he shows up on her doorstep.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe only problem is that I got the feeling the actors were just going through the motions. Amy Pietz is seen here as the crisis center volunteer who shows no emotion when she gets the call from Ou0026#39;Grady. And Ou0026#39;Grady didnu0026#39;t hold her character because you could see the fear on her face when her husband was walking up the sidewalk and later that night when theyu0026#39;re all in the house, but that fear found a courage (from somewhere) out of nowhere. I know, for me, if someone stuck a gun to my head and threatened to kill a person I didnu0026#39;t even know in order to find a child, I would be telling them to go ahead and pull the trigger, but the situation was just handled so badly that the climax to the movie was a terrible letdown.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003e3 out of 10 stars…”