the audience applauded

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

I grew up with the Marshall family. We went to elementary school, middle school, high school east and mass at St.Joe's every Sunday. I knew John pretty well and he was always a sweetie and really funny. My older siblings new the older boys better then I. The movie was good. I feel bad for John, Chris and Roby though. The father was a very mean man and Mrs. Marshall was never nice to us either. God rest her soul. I think Joanna Kerns is a great actress but I cannot remember Maria being so nice. She was very rude to my Mother on one occasion and my Mother cried for days. I will never forget that. I hope the boys do not read this but it is true. They where in fact the richest family in my school and back in the 70's and 80's they seemed to be very well off. I remember there home and it was beautiful. To bad the parents looked down on people that where not on there social status.

the way the father was all calm through it all was too guilty for me meaning his WHOLE NON CHALANT UN CARING attitude towards marie's death. what a real creepy guy,handsome charming etc.but you just really DO NOT always know how men are,even some women too in the world as i know just by looking at this jerk that he was guilty as urich puts on a great acting performance.almost made me feel as i am watching him that HE HIMSELF was the killer he just LOOK guilty,was TOO quiet through it all and too suspect to me when your THIS quiet with something so serious like this involving the ex wife,or wife.i love this film,real passion within his three boys.great acting as emotional scenes regarding acting to look AUTHENTIC AND GENUINE for most actors in movies TV is hard to do but they pull it off greatly they just loved their beautiful mother so much.i am watching it this morning again,try to always see it when it is on. glad the father was truly seen for how ruthless he REALLY is. JERK.may the mother rest in peace forever and live through her son's always.was so sweet the youngest one who had a kid at 17 years old named his first daughter after the mother MARIA.now that is love.

When I was in ninth grade (1997-98), my spanish teacher told us about an incident in Bass River, New Jersey, in which a man set up the murder of his wife while en route to their home in Toms River, NJ after visiting Atlantic City. The man was having an affair with the Assistant Principal of a high school, and he arranged with her to make the killing of his wife possible. Now, I'll tell you how local this story really is. My former high school (graduated in 2001), Pinelands Regional High School, was where this principal worked. In 1984, she was arrested on school grounds for the killing of her lover's wife. Bass River Twp. (Burlington Co. border)is less than a mile from my house (southwest Ocean Co.), and I know the campground where she was killed (Bass River State Park). My Spanish teacher witnessed this woman getting arrested at my old school. The thing is, they changed the name of the school to protect it.I just saw this movie on Sunday, and I realized how eerily local it was. The family lives in an affluent section of Toms River (I think North TR is the most affluent), and Robert Marshall is accused of having a hand in killing his wife, Maria. The movie is about the aftermath, and what the three Marshall boys, Chris, Robbie, and John Marshall go through.What really amazes me is that this film is as local as it gets. I live about 35-40 minutes from Toms River, but I was only 2 when this incident happened, and not living in the area (I moved to Ocean County in 1985). The fact that this was centered around a principal at my own school was unbelievable, and the fact that my teacher told the story is beyond words. While this movie was a typical movie of the week, the acting was decent, and the story was played out well. This was a famous story at my school, and I'm glad I knew about it before I saw this. If you catch this on Lifetime, I highly recommend it, especially to south Jerseyans like me, as it is local, and everyone knows almost nothing happens in south Jersey.

I saw the two part mini-series when it first aired in 1990 and read the book soon after.It is a very typical true life crime drama, that can pretty much be summed up with - a rich New Jersey man has his wife (the mother of his 3 sons) murdered for the insurance money and he gets caught. Nothing great or spectacular. No last minute twists or turns, no police evidence tampering, no plot that backfires. Just a regular old murder for hire, that was not even well known outside the Jersey area until the book and movie came out.Such a simple drama could have easily been a 2 hour TV-movie but instead was a two parter, 4 hours long. It was boring to watch, since it just dragged on and on. Most of the movie was about the man's sons being upset about their mother's murder and their father's involvement, which got old real quick.I would recommend reading the book over watching the movie since the book covers a lot more of the police investigation and trial than the movie does. As I said, the movie primarily focuses on the guy's sons.If you wanna be bored you can catch the movie on Lifetime sometimes.