WhileSheWasOut

While She Was Out (2008)

Kim Basinger portrays a woman named Della who has one hell of a night. Christmas is right around the corner, her husband is an abusive creep, she has to deal with the mall traffic right before the holidays (enough to make anyone snap), and then finds a jerk in the full parking lot that takes up two spaces! Her response is to leave a nasty note on the guy’s car. What she doesn’t realize is that the driver, Chuckie, isn’t too stable and is packing a gun. After her shopping is done Chuckie and his pals confront her and in the process a security guard is killed. The rest of the movie is the gang of guys trying to kill Della, who is the only witness to the crime. What they don’t realize is that Della has been pushed just a bit too much by life and is ready to fight back.

I have to be honest and say that for the first 20 or 30 minutes of this movie I really didn’t like it that much. It spends this time setting up just how miserable Della’s life is and how put upon she is by her husband. I just wasn’t that interested in the character or the story. Then when she finally runs into Chuckie and his friends I still wasn’t that thrilled. It plays pretty much like every other movie where a seemingly passive character snaps when pushed by the “bad guys”. But after a while I found myself really interested in the story and the characters, especially those of Della and Chuckie. Unlike other movies where I don’t really believe that the protagonist could suddenly become a killer, Kim Basinger does such an excellent job that I totally bought into her defending herself like she does. Which of course then makes the whole movie work. I also thought that Lucas Haas, who I never would have thought could pull a role like this off, makes a great villain. The character of Chuckie seems like the kind of kid that would be willing to kill to prevent himself or his friends from going to jail. But he is naive enough to also buy into what eventually happens at the end. Honestly the story isn’t breaking any new ground and we have seen it before, but the performances of Basinger and Haas make this movie work.

Other than one particularly nasty scene with a tire iron there isn’t much in the way of special effects. The camera work and lighting are also decent, but nothing special. Really the best parts of this movie are the performances. It is funny how many times that I’ve written reviews with the theme of how close the movie was to being really good if they had only had a better script, or a better cast. This movie takes an average script and puts it in the hands of a couple really good actors and ends up with a very good movie. I recommend that everyone give While She Was Out a chance. I really liked it and I think you will too. This is available from Anchor Bay and will be released on April 28th. Check them out at http://www.anchorbayentertainment.com/ for more information.

3 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer