The Worst Film Ever

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

Laura Martin (Elisabeth Röhm) is a single mom and an FBI negotiator replacing the sexist angry veteran Agent Carlo. She's secretly dating her superior Frank Gerrard. Her daughter Taylor is best friends with sickly Annie Moss (Britt McKillip) and her mother Elizabeth (Chandra West). Annie is desperate for a transplant. Laura is sidelined after a difficult negotiation and then Elizabeth takes hostages at the hospital to get her daughter into an experimental trial.This is a TV movie. It is awkwardly clunky at times. It can't exceed its TV essence. The leads are fine actors. It pushes the melodrama too hard. It struggles to be something more. None of it is anything exception.

We begin "4 Days Earlier" with the robbery of a convenience store. It becomes a dangerous hostage situation. The swaying, shaky camera-work is dizzying and makes it difficult to watch. But this effect is used mainly for the hostage situations. The significance of "4 Days" is unclear, and action likely changes to the present somewhere early in the running time. Our heroine is pretty blonde FBI agent Elizabeth Rohm (as Laura Martin). She specializes in hostage situations; when a mishap incurs a lawsuit, she is given an unplanned vacation. Divorced a year, Ms. Rohm dates her FBI agent partner, athletically-built Woody Jeffreys (as Frank Gerrard)...Rohm's teen daughter Taylor-Anne Reid (as Taylor) misses her dad and resents Mr. Jeffreys horning in on the family. They are friendly with pretty blonde housewife Chandra West (as Elizabeth "Beth" Moss) and her teen daughter Britt McKillip (as Annie Moss). Unfortunately, Ms. West's daughter is deathly ill. When mother West learns her daughter's experimental medication will be discontinued, she becomes desperate. It climaxes with a hostage situation at "Burnaby Hospital". The mother/daughter scenes are nice, Jerry Wasserman (as Jon Di Carlo) and the supporting cast add some spark, but "FBI: Negotiator" never takes you hostage.*** FBI: Negotiator (10/24/05) Nicholas Kendall ~ Elizabeth Rohm, Chandra West, Woody Jeffreys, Taylor-Anne Reid

wow! I really like this movie, but that is from a woman's point of view. Honestly, it is more of an chick flick with action, rather than just action or drama. So many guys wouldn't like it, I don't think.Of course like any movie, there were things they could improve on, but it was pretty darn good. I loved watching how they set up the dynamics between the mom, her boyfriend, her daughter, the friend with cancer, and the friend's mom. Additionally, they did a very good job showing how Laura Martin (Elisabeth Röhm) was fighting with Agent Di Carlo (Jerry Wasserman) to prove to him that a woman could be just as good at negotiating as a man.In short: I loved it.

These comments could contain spoilers (see last paragraph), but the movie's script is so formulaic that there is really nothing in the plot to spoil.I first encountered this film's lead, Elisabeth Röhm, in the TV series, "Bull," and was so taken with her beauty that I missed if there were any defects in her acting (after all, to me, she was a "newcomer"). By the time she starred in "Law and Order," however, they started becoming evident; and I have to say that they haven't improved here...nothing really bad, just too much false emotion, i.e., there are times you can catch her "acting." The best performances here (IMO, and within the confines of the script), are by Chandra West as the mother of the ailing friend of FBI mom's daughter (played well by Taylor Anne Reid), and by Malcolm Stewart as the FBI boss (especially in the scene where he explains to Reid's character why she shouldn't be blaming her mom for her father's leaving).If there's a spoiler here, it's this: the movie's title promises a hostage negotiation thriller (which in a way it is), but the point of the drama is to highlight the potential fate of severely ill patients excluded from clinical trials, with the FBI mother and neglected daughter merely a predictable structure to fill out the time, and ultimately deliver the message. Otherwise, there is much better drama on series television, and every single point of this drama is tied up neatly in the end, leading to a pat conclusion.