There's a climactic twist as promised in No Good Deed, but it doesn't make a difference except adding one more cue to applaud, if you feel so inclined.
It certainly isn't juicy enough to be the reason Screen Gems took the unusual step of canceling this week's advance screenings, after moviegoers already had tickets. Plus the movie already had been sneaked numerous times nationwide, so spoiling the twist was already possible.
No Good Deed is produced by St. Petersburg native Will Packer, who tweeted me about the cancellations: "Trust me, not my call."
The cancellations occurred at the same time that video surfaced of Ray Rice knocking unconscious his then-fiancee Janay, and the resulting outrage. Watching No Good Deed and its vicious treatment of women, it's easy to think Rice's offense had as much to do with Screen Gems hiding the movie as its plot twist.
This is a movie built on a deplorable notion that the women ask for what they're getting, in the way they dress, the things they say and do, and the things they overlook. What they get includes being smashed in the face with a shovel, bashed in the face with a lamp, choked, beaten and generally terrorized. One woman fights back only after her sexual appeal has been challenged. ("Don't flatter yourself," her won't-be rapist says.)
Not a single woman does what sensible women would, until the last two minutes when happy ending violence is all that's left to do. They're too busy getting lost in Idris Elba's limpid eyes, and his Barry White voice. Elba plays Colin, a very bad man, which the women would know if they heard the exposition that screenwriter Aimee Lagos frontloads through a TV reporter, a prison guard and a parole board member, who deems Colin a "malignant narcissist."
Colin winds up on the doorstep of Terri (Taraji P. Henson), who easily tells this stranger she's alone with two children. Then she lets him in, introduces the kids, takes off her shirt, and eventually shares wine with Colin and her friend Meg (Leslie Bibb). Everything plays out brutally, and the acting's not bad. But it's unsettling for external reasons beyond its control.
Packer produced No Good Deed long before Rice punched Janay. It just happens to be arriving in theaters at a bad time for this sort of material, which Hollywood regularly doles out and fewer notice, much like domestic abuse itself. Black and blue makes green.
Contact Steve Persall at spersall@tampabay.com or (727) 893-8365. Follow @StevePersall.