This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.
Little Town Flirt
Plot Overview
The term MacGuffin is attributed
to Alfred Hitchcock who used it to refer to some object in a
movie while not its main focus moves the plot along. In “Black
Point” it is a duffle bag of clean currency rescued from a raid
on a ketch docked in Ketchikan, Alaska. Criminal mastermind Malcolm
(Miguel Sandoval) sees that heads will roll who'd tipped off the feds.
Quick thinking Gus Travis (Thomas Ian Griffith) rents a house on the
coast at Black Point, Washington to temporarily store the dough for
safe keeping. Unfortunately, the empty houses along the beach
in the off season are a temptation to burglars. A hapless “delivery
guy” John Hawkins (David Caruso) is in the wrong place at the
wrong time when he delivers some cod from the Seahorse Cafe.
Malcolm we see is a fine dancer of the tango 
having been subjected to dance lessons
since he was a kid. He exhibits an upright posture and smooth moves.
Too bad he's got two left feet. John was graduated from the Naval
Academy and taught tactical maneuvers. He exhibits a signature crouching
posture running through the woods dodging bullets. Unfortunately,
he lapsed on situational awareness two years earlier when he lost
his daughter Gabby in a shopping mall. His wife has left him and he's
been unable to move on.
Complicating all their lives is Gus's pretty wife Natalie (Susan Haskell.) She's recognizable as a type from Del Shannon's 1963 hit song, “Little Town Flirt.” She started as a dirt poor fisherman's daughter, married Gus also a fisherman but who'd invested in a boat, became disillusioned with his marital abuse, and is now casting her eye on John as some kind of protector to rescue her. And she's promiscuous enough to hold out some encouragement to Malcolm, as well. According to the song, “You can get hurt,/ Hurt, hurt, hurt/ Fooling around with/ The little town flirt.” The movie showcases the inevitable hurts she puts on the men.
Ideology
We are introduced to John as a man who lacks focus. He has his beeper turned off, so he misses a call from Standing Bear (Gordon Tootoosis) who needs all hands to process the fish catch. John needs the extra hours, but those fish won't keep till later. He's got to get on the ball. (Prov. 4:25) “Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee.” Turn on your beeper.
(Prov. 4:26) “Ponder the path of thy feet, and let all thy ways be established.” In fact he would do well to take stock of his whole situation. His friends tell him, “It's over. There's nothing more you can do, John, so move on.” He has a job opportunity waiting for him in San Francisco. That would help his financial situation and get him away from bad memories.
(Prov. 4:27) “Turn not to the right hand nor to the left: remove thy foot from evil.” There are two diversions he needs to avoid. One is getting drunk and driving recklessly. The other is taking up with a woman of loose morals and a jealous husband.
(Prov. 5:1-2) “My son, attend unto my wisdom, and bow thine ear to my understanding: That thou mayest regard discretion, and that thy lips may keep knowledge.” In the bad old days a family would troop along in public with the man in the lead scouting for danger, followed by the children, and with the mother in the rear protecting their flank. I'm not sure what the formation should be with just the man and his daughter, but I'm pretty sure it's not with her following behind him in his blind spot. Keeping his family intact would have kept his wife with him, too.
Proverbs 5:3-6
‘For the lips of a strange woman drop
as a honeycomb,
and her mouth is smoother than oil:
but her end is bitter as wormwood,
sharp as a two-edged sword.
Her feet go down to death:
her steps take hold on hell.
Lest thou shouldest ponder the path of life,
her ways are moveable, that thou canst not
know them.’
Del Shannon has sung he “knows it's so hard to resist/ The temptation of her tender red lips.” John couldn't resist putting his hand in the cookie jar and kissing Natalie. But that girl was bad news. And John was sure taken by surprise (“Why?”). She plays all her men the same way. “I know just how you feel./ You think her love is real./ You think this time she'll be sincere./ But you'll think you have a paper heart/ When she starts to tear it apart.” A loose woman is one slippery dame.
Production Values
“” (2001) was directed by David Mackay and written by Thomas Ian Griffith and Greg Mellott. It stars David Caruso, Susan Haskell, and Thomas Ian Griffith. Caruso was in good form here. His supporting cast was good, too. Griffith (also one of the writers) plays a memorable bad guy. Haskell puts the ‘fatal’ in femme fatale.
MPAA rated it R for violence and language. It was filmed in beautiful Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. It is strong on agile editing, picturesque backdrops, and compellingly tense music (courtesy of Terry Frewer.) Its main pitfall is a profusion of side-plots that obscure who is the good guy and who the bad. Hint: the female sheriff is the only straight shooter around, but she gets lost in the plot like everybody else.
Review Conclusion w/ Christian Recommendation
I recommend watching it twice in order to begin to understand what just happened. If you'll pretend you weren't paying attention the first time, it might seem like a pretty good movie. Perhaps this was intentional with the introduction of a seriously messed up pretty woman.
Movie Ratings
Action factor: Edge of your seat action. Suitability For Children: Not Suitable for Children of Any Age. Special effects: Average special effects. Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day. Suspense: Keeps you on the edge of your seat. Overall movie rating: Three and a half stars out of five.
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