Encounter with Danger (2009 TV Movie) User Reviews

A Chip! A Chip! My business for a Chip!

[sol-kay · 5/10 · 2 March 2010]

***SPOILERS*** Going to the resort town of Pine Mountain in Washington State for an accountant convention Jack Anderson, Mark Humphrey, mysteriously disappeared from sight on his way there! That has Jack's distraught fiancée Lori Parker, left out in the cold wondering if there was foul play or that he ran off with a mistress, that she had no idea about, he'd been cheating on her with.

Things start to crystallized for Lori when out of the blue this mysterious stranger David Abbott, Neill Feannley, contacts her with information about Jack's disappearance. Abbott tells a confused Lori that Jack together with himself had uncovered a scheme by the top brass of their multi billion dollar computer chip company ACT, Advanced Cerulean Technology, to cook the books on its record earning which in reality have hit rock bottom. If that was made public it can not only land ACT's CEO Elliot Maine, David Nyki, behind bars but bankrupt the company throwing thousands of its workers out on the street and on the unemployment lines! At first thinking that Abbott is some kind of a weirdo Lori in meeting him realizes that there's some truth to his story when he's run down, and put into a coma, by a car at their prearranged, the Mountain Point Ferry Terminal, meeting spot! It's now up to Lori to not only find her missing fiancée Jack Anderson but prevent herself from being offed by those who want to keep from the public, and the FBI, the sleazy and criminal accounting practices by ACT that she's gotten, from the now comatose Abbott, wind of!

***SPOILERS***Not only that Lori also has a secret chip that Jack gave to her for safe keeping that reveals the true nature of ACT's earnings! It's, the chip, the only thing that's keeping Jack alive in him not revealing to his kidnappers, those thugs working for ACT, where the chip is! Passable made for TV crime thriller only worth watching in its star Shannen Doherty, as Lori Parker, convincing performance as the targeted victim of a business scheme. A Scheme that can, if made public, cause a major flagship company in the computer chip industry and the thousands that it employs collapses like a house of cards! In fact it's in knowing that which made a good part of the movie totally unbelievable!***MAJOR SPOILER*** Not that if revealed it could happen but why in hell would someone a career employee working for it-ACT-go along with Lori in causing that to happen! Without Lori, in her being the smart cookie that she is, realizing that she's being set up by him!

A poorly disguised knockoff of Roman Polanski's FRANTIC (1988)

[ghinessk · 2/10 · 10 February 2010]

I found this made-for-TV movie to be a poorly disguised knockoff of Roman Polanski's film FRANTIC (1988). This one is a mostly slow moving "missing person" corporate conspiracy mystery.

Shannen Doherty (Lori) checks into a small-town hotel while her fiancé, a corporate accounting consultant, skips the check-in and goes straight to a meeting. He immediately goes missing and is not seen or heard from again until almost the end of the movie. "Lori's" frantic search to find her man begins... with frustrations at every turn.

This results in lots of meandering searching (virtually no dialogue) in the first hour and really makes the plot drag. Ho-hum. Fortunately, I watched it on my PVR (like TIVO) and resorted to using fast forward a lot.

The last half hour is more swiftly paced and leads to the happy outcome of the corporate baddie getting his just desserts. No big surprise there!

This is the kind of movie to watch on a rainy day at the cottage when you've watched everything else that you brought with you.

Kafkaesque Experience

[lavatch · 8/10 · 22 February 2021]

In "Encounter with Danger," Laurie Parker is a schoolteacher who finds herself trapped in a nightmare worthy of Kafka. After her fiancé, Jack Anderson, vanishes at a conference, Laurie alone must discover the circumstances of his disappearance, which leads her into a labyrinth of corporate power and crime.

The filmmakers were successful in creating a sinister atmosphere in which employees at the Cerulean organization, as well as staff at the resort hotel in Pine Mountain, Washington, all seem to be colluding against Laurie.

There is also the inept local sheriff, who ensures that Laurie will not receive support in locating her husband. The sheriff is an "Andy of Mayberry" type with a hangdog expression and who never believes a word Laurie says.

But the quick-thinking Laurie uses her good classroom skills to discover malfeasance at the top of the Cerulean executive ladder. She then orchestrates a brilliant plan to have Jack released, and she sets up the CEO Elliott Maine for the fall.

Shannen Doherty was great as Laurie, always on the move and resilient to the callous people she encounters. One of the liveliest subplots was Laurie's enlisting of Carter, an employee in Human Resources at Cerulean to get to the bottom of the stolen files. The only question will be whether Carter's support is genuine, or if he too is in the hip pocket of Elliott Maine.

Good suspenseful movie

[lololguys · 8/10 · 17 July 2022]

This movie really keeps you on your toes and guessing who can be trusted vs who's in the multi-billion dollar company's pocketbook throughout. The acting for the most part was solid and kept up the suspense. I really enjoyed this one up to the ending, at which point big plot holes showed up:

1) Why does the fiancé, who's been kidnapped for days by people who control an entire town and its police force, look perfectly well dressed and has not a scratch on him when he's exchanged for the fraud evidence? Must be some nice friendly captors...

2) The captors are trying to shoot the couple in a secluded location when they're literally 1 foot away from them in a narrow passage, but they're chasing them around with guns pointed right at them?!? If they were trying to lure them to the car for a quiet kill, why are they chasing them around waving guns in the air in public where there's plenty of witnesses and knocking baby strollers over in the process causing a huge scene? The villains' actions make no sense in the end confrontation.