Review: ‘No Good Deed’

If you go over to the Rotten Tomatoes or the Metacritic or any other sort of review aggregator, you would see that the newest psychological battle-of-the-sexes thriller “No Good Deed” is just getting shit on left and right by pretty much everybody. Calling it things like “boring” and “derivative” and even trotting out “offensive” and “troubling” here and there, it would seem that this is one of the worst movies of the year. So am I here to throw additional dirt on the grave of this Idris Elba starring movie? Is this film really as bad as everyone is saying?

I will tell you what, I have seen movies worse than “No Good Deed” in just the last few weeks. Can I interest anyone in an additional screening of “The November Man?” How about “Let’s Be Cops?” No takers? Hmm, what a shock. Trust me when I tell you that “No Good Deed” is no worse than those movies, and actually might be better than both. It knows what it is and there really are not any pretensions from the filmmakers that this was going to be a bigger or deeper movie than it actually is. This is simply a thriller featuring a charismatic yet insane Idris Elba and a solid performance from Taraji P. Henson as the mother of two who ends up on the wrong end of Elba’s character’s wrath and anger.

Now there is something of  a”twist” towards the end, though it isn’t anything special or mind blowing so it doesn’t have the intended “oh shit!” effect that was obviously originally intended, however it does make sense and actually helps the 80 minutes that came prior make more sense, so I would definitely rather have an underwhelming dramatic reveal that at least comes off as logical, as opposed to some huge revelation that is supposed to make me go “what the fuck, that is so cray cray!” without actually making any sense.

The story starts with a fella named Colin (Elba) getting denied parole because the parole board still believes he is a violent man who needs to be kept locked up. So instead of going back to prison, Colin manages to escape from his prison transport and very quickly makes his way from Tennessee to Georgia where he stalks his ex-girlfriend from a distance and then confronts her in her home about not waiting for him and not responding to his many letters from prison. Can anyone blame this poor girl? Apparently Colin can and not only does he choke this girl out and not only does he break her neck, but he also smashes her head in with a lamp repeatedly. Kinda harsh, Colin. This is the exact kind of behavior that made her scared of you in the first place. So she was justified. Good work, Colin. He then leaves her home and is driving around at night in the rain when he gets into a car accident. From the accident he walks up the road to a house with the lights on and asks for help from the people living there, which happens to be Terri (Henson), who is home alone watching her two extremely young kids while her husband is away on a trip.

And this is where the majority of the movie takes place, as Colin charms his way into Terri’s home to ostensibly get help, but we the audience know better because just a couple of scenes ago we watched Colin act out extremely violently against another woman, so we know Colin is a sick man despite his twinkling eyes and soft smile and charming, aloof manner, all of which he uses to maximum effect to make Terri start to slowly trust this stranger. So the tension builds for the audience as he gets deeper into her home and meets her children and guzzles her wine and we know that at some point the switch is going to have to be flipped and he is going to have to start terrorizing her because that’s why we are here. And this might be the best section of the movie because of the little game that Colin is obviously playing which Terri has no idea about because as the viewer we are just waiting for the other shoe to drop and for either Terri to realize what’s going on or for Colin to somehow give away what his real intentions are the whole time.

Once that does happen and Colin start chasing Terri around the house and acts like a total psycho, the movie really becomes more about some really tense, awkward scenes between Colin and Terri involving various states of undress. Also if you are playing the “No Good Deed” drinking game, you need to take a shot every time Terri either stabs Colin with a bladed weapon of some sort or BONKS him on the head with some sort of heavy object. Also take a shot every time Terri wakes up her daughter to escape and take another shot every time Terri puts this kid BACK to bed (this happens OFTEN).

About those kids, it is kind of weird that Terri would be saddled with two kids to protect, and one of the kids is a damn BABY, and yet this barely presented any sort of problem for her. When she had to move with the kids, she moved with them, when she had to hide them somewhere for a moment, she hid them no problem and then when we didn’t want them around, she put them to bed. She might as well have been alone because the danger and jeopardy of having kids in a house with a psycho does not register at all.

And while many film reviewers and critics just shit all over this thing, the theater full of women that I saw this movie with absolutely loved the movie and ate it up, hooting and hollering every time Henson managed to land any sort of blow against her antagonist, so this story seemed to work, at least for its core audience, which is women who love Idris Elba but also like to embrace violent bursts of girl power.

So is this a terrible movie? It is not necessarily good, but it does what it set out to do and it really isn’t that bad. It’s a decent and straightforward thriller, it has some tension, good actors and something that could sort of considered a “twist” ending. Plus the movie is less than 90 minutes long, so come on, people, what do you want?