Wandering Eye

source: Wandering Eye

Since I live in New York it was difficult ignoring the errors, but once I got by that it wasn't half bad. There was a suspense and the ending was a bit contrived but I still enjoyed it.

Since when does New York City have black patrol cars? The movie was good, good acting and believable premise but not very authentic as far as believing it occurred in The Big Apple.

**SPOILERS*** Bored and frustrated in having her doctor husband Connors Abbott, Michael Travis, away at the hospital for as much as 20 hours a day in the ER Mary, Amanda Righetti, joins, on a hunch from a number of married friends of her, this personal internet website called "The Wandering Eye". The website caterers to married persons like herself who feel that the spark has gone out of their marriage and want to start up a new relationship with fellow bored and frustrated married individuals. Unknown to Mary there's someone else who's also very interested in "The Wandering Eye" and it's not from meeting a future love partner. This person's been tracking down the websites membership and murdering them! What's so unusual in the killers motives for murder his that is victims ring fingers are cut off and the wedding rings removed! Having a date set up between Mary and pharmaceutical salesman Lucas Manning, Frank Chiesurin, by "The Wandering Eye" website the two after having lunch meet up at a swanky airport hotel to get down and dirty only to have Mary in feeling guilty, about screwing around behind her husband's back, back out at the very last moment. Left alone and having a few drinks someone's enters the hotel room and bows Lucus away! It's when Mary sees on TV the news of Lucus's murder she realizes that whoever murdered him is soon going after her and decides to come clean in being the last person, besides his killer, to see Lucus alive and go to the police! It soon becomes evident to the two detectives on the Lucus Manning murder case Detectives Jackie Fizpatrick & Kyle Solomon, Krista Bridges & Andrew Shaven, that both Manning's, who also had his ring finger chopped off, and the previous couple Michael Hallas, Mark Lombert & Ann Federman, Maxine Morin, where murdered by the same person. And what connected those murders was the victims being members of "The Wondering Eye" personal website! ***SPOILER*** Interesting take on the killers motives in murdering married couples who cheat on each other that has to do with his or her obsession to upholding the vows of matrimony which was very dear and near to his heart. With Mary getting away with being offed by the deranged killer he makes a determined effort to murder her in tricking the police into thinking that someone else, a former boyfriend of Mary's, is the person that their looking for. It's the killer's arrogance and self confident in his own indestructibility or in not getting caught that in the end does him in. That's by exposing himself and being a bit too talkative, when all he had to do is put a bullet in Mary's skull, that had the cops that also included Det. Jackie Fitzpatrick's ex-husband police serial killer profiler Det. Will Atherton, Allen Altman, get the jump on him! It's then where the killer soon ended up getting hit and hospitalized, and later arrested, by a runaway police car.

In its narrative design, "Wandering Eye" was a routine detective-style thriller. But by the end, a very engaging protagonist emerges out of a standard psycho killer-on-the-loose plot. The main character of Maren Abbott was trapped in a lackluster marriage with a doctor who is such a workaholic that Maren takes the step of meeting other men on a website called Wandering Eye. It turns out that the website has been compromised, and a mad killer is stalking the clients during their trysts. As part of the stock formula of this genre of film, the police are completely incompetent in tracking the killer. That brings us to Maren, the character who steps up to do the job of the police by serving as "bait" to draw the killer out. In the end, there is a clever plot twist in the identity of the killer. But more than being the centerpiece of a suspenseful crime yarn, Maren gradually develops into a character of stature. At each turning point, she makes a choice based on integrity. Her thoughtful decisions eventually have a payoff--not so much in the entrapment of the killer--but as a decent person who did the right thing. This was a well-conceived, multi-dimensional character with an excellent interpretation delivered by the performer. Well done!

So I like Amanda Righetti and two of her movies stand out for me. One is this one and the other is Shadow of Fear (2012). Good story line, and in a rare LMN occurrence, there was no betrayal by the protagonist, because in the eleventh hour she came to her senses and stopped it! Guy who played her husband though, looked like a d-ck to be honest. He looked half asleep all the time. But overall a good movie. Oh and Krista Bridges was superb in this too!

Wandering Eye