Watch Coming Out Alive For Free

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

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.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

In a film made for Canadian television, Helen Shaver plays Isobel Gateway, whose disabled son, Nickie, is deceitfully taken by her disunited husband (Michael Ironside). When she becomes impatient with tepid police efforts to locate the boy, Isobel tries her own methods through hiring private detectives and, eventually, mercenaries whose advertisements she has perused in a soldier of fortune type of periodical. Because she and her estranged husband have not filed for divorce, the police do not view his father's taking of Nickie as a kidnapping, and as the field of prospective mercenaries is unsuitable, Isobel is at wit's end when Jocko Riley (Scott Hylands), an assassin-for-hire stalks her, gradually convincing her to utilize his services and later of an unexpected motive for her spouse absconding with her son. A distinctive lack of design marks the scenario with an episodic quality instead of a needed organized and linear plot for what is, after all, a rather basic premise. Acting honours are to Hylands for his interesting reading although his accent is not only unidentifiable but inconsistent as well; the film, set largely in and about London, Ontario, benefits from solid production values despite a small budget.