★★★
“Because ‘Lady Accountant’ wouldn’t have sold as well…”
The salacious sleeve promises considerably more than this can deliver. For we are actually talking a TV movie from the eighties here, with all the limitations that imposes on content and execution. Yet, if sold a lot more on sizzle than steak, and it did come very close to not qualifying here – likely the last scene being when it finally reached the finish line – I can say I was never bored.
Long-time soap opera queen Lucci plays Laurel, the young daughter of a mob family, who witnesses her parents being killed as part of a war between Mafia groups, over whether or not to go legitimate. She’s then taken in by one of her father’s allies, Victor Castle (Wiseman), and grows up as part of his family, becoming a lawyer and eventually marrying his son, Robert (Born). Castle has never given up the dream of getting out of the mob world, and with Laurel’s help is working towards that goal. However, the more traditional families are no less reluctant than they were decades previously, and the resulting feud comes once again to Laurel’s house and loved ones. She ends up taking over as the head of the family, and is now determined to find both those who killed her parents, and those intent on perpetuating the beef now.
It does play like a low-rent version of The Godfather, with Lucci playing the Michael Corleone role of someone who doesn’t really want to get involved in the criminal enterprise, yet finds herself increasingly drawn into it. As such, she’s good in the role, exuding the necessary confidence to make her facing down a room of Mafia dons at least plausible, if still somewhat unlikely. There’s an effective scene early on, when she has a meeting with a prospective partner of the Castles, and rips him a new one for false accounting and fraud. This establishes her character as at least a financial bad-ass, even if there’s precious little gun-play for her to do over the first 85 or so minutes.
Still, director Moxey has been doing this kind of thing for what seems like forever – he directed the original Charlie’s Angels pilot – and keeps the story-line progressing consistently. Certainly, Lauren’s resulting character arc is the best thing the film has going for it, as we see her develop over the course of the film. If this does resemble a pilot episode for a series that never happened, the way it finishes makes it one I would be more than slightly interested in watching. It feels a bit like an eighties version of La Reina Del Sur, with its story of a woman whose family ties to organized crime prove eventually to be a critical formative influence in her life. At the time, that was positively radical, and even if the treatment here is undeniably milder than I’d have preferred, I wasn’t left feeling like I’d been too badly deceived by the cover.
Dir: John Llewellyn Moxey
Star: Susan Lucci, Michael Nader, Roscoe Born, Joseph Wiseman