A Deadly Encounter

Plot synopsis:
The film follows a group of teenagers living in a fictional planned community called New Granada. It begins with Carl Willat (Michael Kramer) and his friends, Richie White (Matt Dillon), Claude Zachary (Tom Fergus), and Johnny (Tiger Thompson) hanging out at "the Rec" (Recreation Center), which is the only place in the community where young people can spend time and be supervised by Rec counselor Julia (Julia Pomeroy).
From an overpass, Mark Perry (Vincent Spano) and his friend shoot a BB hole in the windshield of a passing patrol car and flee on their bikes. They pass Carl and Richie and tell them to hide. Sgt. Ed Doberman (Harry Northup) arrives shortly, pulls them from their hiding place and finds a pocket knife on Richie. He takes them in and calls Carl's father Fred (Andy Romano) to pick up his son.
Carl's father is a local businessman. Before getting Doberman's call, he is talking to Homeowners Association president Jerry Cole (Richard Jamison) about getting wealthy landowner Mr. Sloan (Lane Smith) to buy land across the street from the Rec and build an industrial park instead of the planned twin cinema and roller rink, to the loss of the local kids. Doberman questions the defiant Richie and Carl about the BB gun. Richie is then taken out of the room while Doberman lectures Carl and warns him that he could end up at "the Hill", a juvenile detention facility.
The next day at school, Claude announces that he took drugs to prepare for an upcoming test and has a bad reaction. Afterward, the students are assembled in the school's cafeteria for a presentation about the recent shooting of the police car, where Carl exchanges smiles with Cory (Pamela Ludwig). That evening, Carl asks his father about the land across from the Rec, and his father tells him about the proposed industrial park. An apoplectic Carl storms out to join friends at the Rec.
The kids have brought drugs to the Rec's playground, where Claude buys a gram of hash from Tip (Eric Lalich). An announcement about a party at a nearby house causes the group to migrate there. Carl sees Mark making out with Cory on a couch. Mark threatens Carl not to mention his name to the cops. Carl then tells Cory that she could do a lot better than Mark and leaves, unknowingly followed by Mark and his friend who, after Doberman arrives in his patrol car to bust the party, beat up Carl as he is walking home alone. Carl stumbles home but is unable to sneak past his parents, who interrupt their meeting with Jerry Cole to grill the boy. After Carl goes upstairs, Jerry suggests to Fred that the Rec should be closed the next day so that the kids won't be making trouble when Mr. Sloan and his people come to visit.
The next day at the Rec, Doberman arrives and Julia talks to him about keeping the Rec open, but over Julia's objections, he comes inside, finds drugs on Claude and takes him into custody. They emerge from the Rec among rowdy teens to find Richie standing defiantly on the roof of the patrol car. After a brief foot chase, Richie gets away.
Richie and Carl come upon Cory and her friend, who have just emerged from a house with a stolen pistol. They all go to a half-finished town home that Carl and Richie call their condo. They plan a 'picnic with a gun' for the next day. On the way home, Carl sees Mr. Sloan's car at his house and plants firecrackers under the hood. The firecrackers go off as the men are leaving, and Mr. Sloan is scared away from buying land in New Granada.
At the picnic the next day, the kids take turns shooting the pistol until the ammo is gone. Later, Claude tells Carl that it was Tip who sold him the hash, and Cory announces that Tip had recently gotten busted. They decide to pay Tip a visit and interrogate him. Tip admits he told the police whom he sold the hash to. The group throws Tip into the adjacent pond while Tip's mother watches. Cory gives Carl a kiss, showing him that she likes him. When Carl gets home, his mother Sandra (Ellen Geer) tells him that he is forbidden to see his friends and that the Rec will be closed. Carl gets in a fight with his father.
In school the next day, Carl overhears Tip's mother revealing the names of the boys who assaulted her son. Carl grabs Richie and they run to Richie's house, where Richie grabs the pistol and the keys to his mom's Bronco. As they leave town, Doberman chases them. They flip the Bronco and flee the scene in opposite directions. Doberman chases Richie and fires a warning shot. Richie points his unloaded pistol at him and Doberman fires and kills Richie. Carl runs away to 'his' condo. Cory meets him there and they spend the night together. After Cory leaves in the morning, Carl goes home to grab money, and along the way he sees Mark riding his dirt bike. He takes Mark's BB gun and shoots him in the shoulder, which causes him to crash his bike. Mark sits down with Carl and they decide their fight was stupid and they should team up instead. Carl goes home, sneaks in and sees his mother on the phone discussing a community meeting about the kids at the school for that night. He flees to the Rec where all of his friends are.
The kids decide to go to the school to confront the parents. While the meeting is in progress, the kids chain the doors closed, begin lighting fireworks and trashing the school. One girl taunts her mother over the school's loudspeaker, and a boy taunts an officer. The kids then begin destroying cars in the parking lot. The kids break open a patrol car and pull out guns, eventually blowing up several cars and starting fires. Julia, locked inside the school, sees Johnny and convinces him to give her a phone. Police arrive and the kids run. Doberman speeds off to find Carl. He's able to arrest him and they drive off. Mark is waiting down the road and shoots the police car, causing it to crash and catch fire. Carl escapes leaving the unconscious Doberman inside. The car explodes in a massive fireball.
The next morning, Carl boards a bus with other teens involved in the vandalism for their ride to the Hill. As the bus goes beneath an overpass, Carl smiles as he sees Claude, Johnny, and Cory waving down to them.

Tags: violence

Review:
Interesting Premise.
Pulling in 2.6 million viewers, one has to wonder what everyone's opinions on the storyline/plot is.Reading the run down over at lifetime, I was led to believe that this would be an edge-of-your-seat thriller about a single mother being stalked and finally confronting the stalker.
Sadly I was mistaken.
While the main plot is interesting enough - Single mother run off road one night, then is stalked by same guy, the reasoning behind the stalking left nothing but a really bad taste in my mouth.Laura Leighton plays the victim, and she does it well.
Whether it was all those years on Melrose Place or not, she does well in this movie, playing a mother who would do anything to protect her son from harm, and she's looking pretty good too these days.Leighton is really the only good thing about this movie.
I think many people will identify with the main character, after discovering why the stalker is stalking, it will be a view-only-once type of movie..
disappointing film after a good premise.
Settling down with a cuppa for an afternoon film, the idea of a single mum being stalked by a loony driver seemed quite entertaining.
How wrong I was!
The single mum who works nights is run off the road by a man furious at a driving mistake she made on the road.
But because her phone number is in the car window he can track her down!
Therein follows a ridiculous trail of events, totally unrealistic things in the circumstances e.g. leaving her child alone ( who is never allowed to be alone )in a motel to order pizza very late at night whilst she goes to see her ex husband hoping for a reconciliation.
The sex scene here was totally unnecessary to the plot of the film.The ending was just silly!
And there is a very obvious time goof in that she leaves the motel at night and gets out of the car in the daylight..
Good Mystery.
Not a bad MOW.
I was expecting another film based on womens issues but was pleasantly surprised at the element of suspense.
Sure, parts of the plot were pretty hokey but for the most part the movie kept me guessing.
Was the nut bar connected with the ex husband, somebody in the tavern or was it the guy (person) that she cut off?
Daniel Magder was excellent.
I've seen him in Mom's on Strike and in Guilt by Association, both MOW's and he is very creditable, especially the way he challenges his mother the way a preteen would typically act.Laura Leighton also played the typical mother (ex-wife) that both men and women can relate to.
She was frustrated enough to seem real.See it if you missed it.
It's worthwhile..
Stalker film hurt by poor motivation and stupidity of main characters....
A DEADLY ENCOUNTER promises to be a good story of a male driver (ALAIN GOULEM) harassing a woman (LAURA LEIGHTON) whose accidental cut-off in traffic causes him to go berserk.
The opening sequence on a highway at night is well directed and manages some taut suspense.
But as soon as the script delves into showing us the predicament of the foolish woman who cares a great deal about protecting herself and her son from further harm, the story goes off the deep end because none of the plotting is believable or makes any sense.
It's no help that Leighton's character makes a lot of foolish mistakes.Especially unbelievable is the ending both in the manner the outcome is reached in a cat-and-mouse game and then a blazing over-the-top shootout with the predator.
His motivation is simply "You cut me off!" which is all we ever learn about him.The acting is competent enough but the story is watchable for the first fifteen minutes before abruptly changing to implausible the rest of the way..
Beyond Awful.
The female lead was stiff and wooden and the ex-husband was not engaging in the least.
The lead's friend had all the talent you'd expect to find in a middle-school theatrical production.
The lead's mother was not even in it; she looked more like a producer's assistant running lines with the lead rather than someone actually acting.
Within ten minutes, I was rooting for the bad guy.
It was so bad that I ended up reading a package insert from a box of sinus pills I found in the drawer of the nightstand.
The possible side effects were a lot scarier than this movie..
Could have-should have-been much better.
A lame ending and some silly plot elements take the zing right out of what could have been a decent enough made-for-T stalker movie.Laura Leighton may never win an Oscar, but she deserves better material than this lazy effort.
A first year film student could have written a more sensible and more gripping script than this, and almost anybody over the age of puberty could have scripted a better conclusion.The premise of a furious driver stalking a fellow motorist who cut him off on the freeway is reasonable, if over-the-top considering the two did not actually have an accident.
Some people are nuts (for want of a more politically correct word), and extreme road rage is not unknown.
However, in the world of fiction scenarios of this sort should not end in as lame and downright senseless fashion as they do in this instantly forgettable movie.
And we won't even worry about some of the implausible and illogical things that happen in between - the brightest mom on the planet, this woman is not..
OK, so she doesn't have caller ID.
When you are being stalked, you GET IT!
And no cell phone?
When you are being stalked, you GET ONE if you are one of the few full time working parents that is the head of the household that doesn't own one already.
This mom gets a big ZERO in the parenting department.
So her mom is in the hospital and she decides a shopping trip will help her out.
Glad I have Tivo and a FF button on the remote.And what is with the 10 line minimum, I just don't have that much to say about such a bad movie.
I guess I can ask why she keeps opening packages that she has no clue who they are from.
The son really didn't add much to the movie either.
The cops were a big ol zero too.
Now get to the nearest Verizon and get the darn cell phone.
Bad, bad and really bad!
**SPOILERS**.
Warning: This may contain SPOILERS!!First of all I watch a lot Lifetime movies and realize they are just that....Lifetime movies.
Some are great (really), some are good and some are bad.
Unfortunately this movie falls into the latter category.
It actually started out with some potential....single, divorced hard working mom (who gets out of work at 2:00 AM) cuts a guy off while driving home from work and let's just say he doesn't take it too well.
The stalking begins immediately with phone call hang ups and escalates to her home being broken into and completely trashed.
So she goes to her mother's for the night and the next morning her mother's car blows up.
This seems to be just a pain in the butt for our heroine who deals with it by going underwear and jewelry shopping!!!
So the police put her and her son in a local motel for safe keeping and what does Mom do?
She goes off to work leaving the kid all alone at night in a strange motel room and tells him to order a PIZZA!!!
I couldn't believe it!
Then it really gets stupid!
And the ending just made me angry because it was so ridiculous and typical.
Too bad because it seemed to have possibilities..
Appalling stupid, even for a Lifetime Network movie.
Bad news for anyone wanting to film a full-length parody of a Lifetime Network movie- the makers of A Deadly Encounter have already done it, albeit unintentionally.
All of the Lifetime tropes are there- a divorced mother in peril from a deranged stalker, an unreliable ex-husband (who, of course, cheated on her while they were married), and a police department that patronizingly dismisses her complaints, forcing her to Stand Up For Herself.
Especially jaw-dropping is the scene where the heroine, after enduring a break-in and the attempted murder of her mother by her seemingly ubiquitous stalker, decides to relieve the stress by going shopping!
Having seen first hand the harassment of a co-worker by some creep she met at church, I know stalking is not a joke, but it certainly is in this movie..
Road Rage.
***SPOILERS*** Over the top made for TV movie about this crazed stalker,Alain Goulem, who sets his sights on pretty single mom, aren't they all now a days in the movies, Joanne Sanders (Laura Leighton) who innocently cut him off one night on the highway on her way home from work as a hostess at the Santana Nightclub in downtown Phillie.
Feeling both hurt and disrespect's this nut case starts to make Joanne and her 13 year old son Eric's lives miserable!
If miserable is the right word for it.
Hounding Joanne day and night by making threatening phone calls to her house the psycho goes a step farther by at first booby trapping her mom's car and then going so far as kidnapping her son Eric.
As for Joanne's ex Keith,Frank Schorpion, he's on the outs with Eric as well as herself and tries to keep as far away from Joanne, and Joanne's problems, as possible.The film gets more ridicules by the minute with Joanne really doing nothing to help herself in finding the creep by just installing a caller ID system on her phone, which for the most part is mandatory, to get his number and reported him to to the police.
Joanne doesn't even have a cell phone that she can use to call the cops, which she magically later obtains, to use when she spots the stalker or his SUV when she's outside out of her house.
In fact there was a scene when Joanne spotted the stalker's SUV parked right alongside her car and didn't even bother to take down his license plate and give it to the police!***SPOILERS*** The ending really tops it, the movie, all with Joanne being forced by the stalker,who's holding her son Eric hostage, to say pretty please to him for all the hurt he suffered because of her, not at once considering all the hurt he caused Joanne, by cutting him off on the highway earlier in the film.
Still not satisfied with her answer, yes Joanne did say pretty please to him, this total nut job went in for the kill only to end up getting everything that's coming to him, from an finally outrage and gun toting Joanne, that put him on ice or the hot seat for good!.
Really stupid movie.
Really stupid movie.
Really stupid movie.
Okay here's the story - a stupid woman cuts off a car on busy highway and then kills the driver.
The end.Are we really supposed to have any sympathy for her?
I think not!
She is also stalking her ex-husband.
By stalking is going to his home, long after their divorce and then making him feel bad because he's moving on with his life and she isn't.
He is in his own home with a young woman making love.
I felt no sympathy for her barging into is house late at night uninvited and then leaving in a huff.
I felt bad for him.
She also gets her mother involved in a car explosion.
She also makes no attempt to allow her son and his father to get together.
She accuses a complete stranger of being her stalker, is proved wrong, and does nothing to apologize for the mistake.Again, we're supposed to have sympathy for her?
In fact I also thought her son was an obnoxious brat and that they deserved each other.I liked the mother and Daniel Magder, as the husband, as best in the film and most honest in their interpretation.
The kid was just plain awful and the leading lady, Laura Leighton, just as bad.
Whether my judgment is because of the role or the fact that she never showed a sign of any honesty in her performance.
Cold all the way through and she was in the wrong.
And the only killer in this.
Her look at the end, which was really a laugh, with her son, proves my point.
Close up of them without an expression of any kind.
Not worth any price of admission or time.