Second to Die (2002)

I like Second to Die for mindless entertainment, and despite criticism to the opposite, I think Eleniak is a good actress. But mostly, agreeing with other review, I can watch the movie again and again just to see Paul Winfield as a cute, comical detective, always polite while he has everyone's number. Truly, Winfield was an underrated actor. How tragic that he died so soon.

I've never written a review on IMDb but after catching this little stinker today on Lifetime Movie Network, or whatever it is called, I jumped on here to see what others had written. I couldn't believe the number of people giving this piece of you-know-what good ratings! First of all, the writing was mindless. Anyone could have written this script. It is generic and bland. The worst part of this movie HAS to be the acting. Half the time the cast sounds as if they are simply reading their lines, the other half they sound like they are too bored to bother. And who could blame them? I don't excuse the sloppy filmmaking and apathetic acting just because it is a small budget film. Many others have managed to produce well-scripted and acted movies on tight budgets. One of the critics said this is the perfect movie for 3am on Showtime when you can't sleep. I agree. Better than Unisom!

Possible spoilers but I'll be careful not to ruin the plot.This movie had me guessing toward the end. I think the cast did quite well with the script and none were obviously "acting". This was the best performance by Erika I have seen to date and I hold out hope that she can learn to really "become" the person she is portraying. I think she has potential. The guy who played the cruel Jim was absolutely, believably rotten to our heroine. He and Grady the older detective were the two in this movie that did the best job in my opinion. I despised Jim for the way he treated his wife, but now I realize its because he really acted the part well.The ending left the viewer to do some of their own brain work and for me that was a bit of a let down. Maybe I'm weird but I like clean endings so you know what really became of the characters. A few of them were left for you to figure out. For that I deducted one point.Write your own ending...................

This movie was boring in the beginning, you just want the movie to end. But actually it got more and more interesting and had a very nice ending. The acting was not so good and I have seen movies with similar histories. Anyway I give it a 6/10. Watch it if u like thriller.