Review: Andie MacDowell is ‘At Risk’ for Lifetime

By April MacIntyre Apr 10, 2010, 22:25 GMT

MacDowell in At Risk, for Lifetime, courtesy of Lifetime

Crime novelist Patricia Cornwell's penned work is brought to the smallscreen via Lifetime's "At Risk" airing tonight at 9 pm on the female-centric network. 

The film stars Andie MacDowell as a steel Magnolia in the Yankee bastion city of Boston, cast as Monique "Money" Lamont, the district attorney running for governor.

Once again, MacDowell gets to show off her Francophile love (her "Groundhog Day" character's college major) as Lamont parlez le francais avec her père in a Southern accent and delivers terse little ripped from the headlines soundbites in her bid to be governor.

Lamont laments with wavering voice, "We women running for office have to be strong AND vulnerable..."

The feel of the film marries elements of Bruckheimer's "CSI" and soap serial "Days of Our Lives," where gruesome forensic shots are layered into melodramatic story written in a TV drama scripted style.

Cornwell’s 2006 novel brings southern belle Ms. Lamont to the big leagues of Massachusetts politics. “When I’m the governor, all the criminals will be at risk,’’ she proclaims, then reviews her TV spot, and later says,"make the ad softer, stick a kid in there somewhere" editing via phone to her political war room.

Lamont announces a $50 million forensic lab and crime initiative that will help solve cold cases. She assigns her top investigator, a studly State Police officer named Win Garano (Daniel Sunjata), to solve the brutal 1975 murder of a 90+ year old- woman in Knoxville, Tennessee.  Win enlists the help of a detective friend down yonder named Delma Sykes (Annabeth Gish), and forensic scientist Stump (Ashley Williams). Their scenes of cobbling together the clues of the murder shows Cornell's ability to weave numerous story elements into a cohesive tale of intrigue. You are also reminded of just how good an actress Gish is, even when being under served in a production.

In this day and age of empty coffers it is a stretch at best to think Massachusetts' tax payer funds would be earmarked to solve a Tennessee cold case murder.  Another annoyance for me, as an ex resident of Essex county, is the confusion of county names.  Boston is Suffolk county.  Why that detail was cocked up is beyond me.

Lamont is played by MacDowell with a frosty demeanor and is seasoned with the right amount of political hubris to make her stage-y pol speak and sound bites ring familiar in the age of Sarah Palin and Christopher Dodd. 

Garano plays the likable rogue officer with aspirations who is scripted to serve a particular need.  His arms-length chemistry with the stiff MacDowell works in a weird way.  Diahann Carroll is cast as Win’s grandmother, Nana, who is the Jiminy Cricket of the piece, and very superstitious to boot.  It's great to see her on the smallscreen once again

"At Risk" will be followed next week by the sequel, "The Front," with most of the same cast. Cornwell serves as executive producer.