Restraining Order

Rating

Director

Lee H. Katzin

Screenplay

John Jarrell

Length

1h 35m

Starring

Eric Roberts, Hannes Jaenicke, Tatjana Patitz, Dean Stockwell, Franc Luz, Rif Hutton, Natalija Nogulich, James Antonio, Kevin Dobson, Kenny Black, Sondra Spriggs Williamson

MPAA Rating

R

Review

PREFACE:
In the early 2000s, I was writing reviews for an outfit called Apollo Guide Reviews. That website has since been closed down.

Attempting to reconstruct those reviews has been an exercise in frustration. Having sent them to Apollo Guide via email on a server I no longer have access to (and which probably doesn’t have records going back that far), my only option was to dig through The Wayback Machine to see if I could find them there. Unfortunately, while I found a number of reviews, a handful of them have disappeared into the ether. At this point, almost two decades later, it is rather unlikely that I will find them again.

Luckily, I was able to locate my original review of this particular film. Please note that I was not doing my own editing at the time, Apollo Guide was. As such, there may be more than your standard number of grammatical and spelling errors in this review. In an attempt to preserve what my style had been like back then, I am not re-editing these reviews, which are presented as-is.

REVIEW:
When a hard-boiled lawyer successfully defends a guilty man, he gets more than he bargained for in television director Lee H. Katzin’s latest foray into legal suspense.

Eric Roberts plays Robert Woodfield, a married lawyer whose latest client, Martin Ritter (Hannes Jaenicke), lies to avoid a murder conviction. Woodfield ends up the unwitting pawn in a game of intimidation. He ends up the only witness to a murder that leads him to uncover a Mafia-like scheme that could very well mean his own end.

There’s plenty of murder and mayhem as the racketeers attempt to cover up their secretive deal. They terrorize Woodfield and his wife, trying to convince him not to go to the police with what he knows. When they get personal, so does Woodfield as he takes on the mob head-to-head.

There are limitless possibilities when making law-based thrillers that scan the underworld and there are scenes in Restraining Order that are remarkably similar to The Godfather (in subject matter, anyway), but this one quickly degenerates into a clichéd romp into not-so-organized crime.

There are very few surprises along the way, as the plot resolves too quickly and there’s little left to do but go through the hollow motions. Eric Roberts certainly can’t match up to his sister Julia, whose talent is far superior to his own. Dean Stockwell gives an unoriginal performance as Woodfield’s friend and mentor, whose involvement in the plot is as obvious as the film’s plot. Hannes Jaenicke is only slightly better than his cast mates, owing much to his years of experience in German television.

Katzin’s four decades of television directing experience have made him an adequate director, but Restraining Order feels like a television movie from beginning to end. The best moment is a terrific, yet brief black-and-white sequence where Roberts contemplates all that’s gone wrong. This scene temporarily makes the movie feel more important than it is.

The film is well paced after the sluggish first half-hour. The editing is effective, although the cinematography is lame with some lighting and exposure problems evident in a few scenes.

Quality suspense can’t just be thrown on the screen. It has to be gently moulded into a story where the characters become family and the audience shares every bit of their anguish. That way, as the tension grows, the audience can’t help but feel it too. Audiences will likely enjoy some of Restraining Order’s early moments, but will be entirely disappointed after they’ve figured everything out in the first hour.

Review Written

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