Lifetime
The Lifetime networks are flying high again following the recent LMN thriller Cabin Pressure, and now as part of the ‘Sunday Night Thrills’ series of films we’re getting another kidnapping drama high in the sky with Brace for Danger (for once the network is doing a good job at being clever with their titles). If you saw Cabin Pressure, or the Jodie Foster thriller Flightplan, a lot of this story may feel familiar.
In Brace for Danger, a podcaster named Erin announces to the world that she is about to drop a tell-all podcast about her life, not shy to mention that she’s had many (many) relationships with various powerful men, from actors to politicians, and she is not afraid to name names just to show that she has control of her life, not these men, a few of whom have tried to pay her off to not release the podcast. As her fans eagerly await, the podcast never drops because shortly after her announcement Erin is attacked in her home, nearly strangled to death, but she manages to grab a wine bottle and smash it over the attacker’s head, killing him in the process. At the local police station, Detective Peyton Sherman is informed by her captain that Erin has requested a female officer so he is taking her off of the case she’s been working on and assigning her to Erin. When Peyton arrives at the hospital, Erin seems annoyed that she’s there — a moment that feels odd but should not be overlooked or forgotten — and is even more annoyed when the detective reveals that Erin is being moved to a safe house. She gets a call from the captain who asks if she’s told Erin everything, and for some reason asks if the fiancé is there as well. Peyton seems to think that is an odd question, but brushes it off and she and another officer wheel Erin out of the hospital … while Peyton surprises fiancé Andrew that he is not going with her.
At the safe house, Erin is whining about not having her computer and podcasting equipment, and she has no communications at all with the outside world. Peyton informs her that a computer containing the tell-all has been stolen, but she will send someone to retrieve her laptop (although there will still be no internet connection). With Erin all settled in , Peyton has to plan to leave town for her parents’ 50th anniversary party. She will be leaving her daughter Lucy at home as she is preparing for a major soccer match in the hopes that a scout will see her an offer a scholarship. Lucy will be under the care of Peyton’s boyfriend Ryan, who is also a detective at the same precinct. But someone has already been to Peyton’s house, finding easy access through the sliding glass doors around back and texting someone the information. Lucy somehow heard something small hit the floor while she was in her room upstairs with headphones on, but found no one in the house when she went to investigate. (Side note: does no one lock their sliding glass doors at the back of the house anymore? Not even a cop?! This is a rather common plot device in these Lifetime movies.) After getting Erin settled, Peyton has her write down a list of the men she names in her tell-all, highlighting the ones who tried to pay her off. She also brings up Andrew, but Erin assures her that he is the best thing that’s ever happened to her. After she gives Peyton the list, Erin goes to the bathroom … and she is attacked again by a figure in a hoodie. Luckily the police were in the premises, but the other officer was injured while jumping on the attacker and the attacker apparently got away. This prompts the police to move Erin to a new location, and Peyton asks her captain if there might be someone on the inside working with the people trying to silence Erin.
Lifetime
Returning to her own home, Peyton sees a strange man outside of her house who turns out to be Andrew, desperate to find out where Erin is as they are to be married in 35 days. He followed Peyton home and begs her to deliver a message that he’s still waiting for her and counting down the days until the wedding. Before heading to the airport, Peyton gets her things in order at work, and shows the list of names to Ryan before locking it away in her desk, but Ryan seems very interested in it for some reason. After Peyton arrives at her destination, she calls Ryan but she does not know he’s sitting at her desk, having gotten her locked drawer open and is taking a picture of the list. Ryan had already asked Peyton where the safe house was, which she thought was odd but he just wanted to make sure she had time to get from there to her house for dinner. Sure, Jan. Peyton isn’t long at her parents’ house and jets back home the day after the anniversary party. As she is attempting to shove her luggage into the overhead bin, another passenger in First Class sees her struggle and asks the flight attendant if she couldn’t be moved up to First Class to sit with her since the flight isn’t full. The request is granted and Peyton gets a surprise upgrade, and makes small talk with the woman, Samantha. At one point, Samantha asks Peyton about Lucy … and Peyton does not recall ever saying her daughter’s name. At about the same time, Lucy is in the kitchen at home when an intruder slides open the door and walks through the room undetected! Lucy has supersonic hearing when she’s upstairs but she doesn’t hear the door open when she’s practically standing next to it and not wearing headphones?!?! Lucy is kidnapped, and Samantha reveals that she knows just about everything there is to know about Peyton and her family, including her late husband. All she wants now is the location of Erin, and Lucy will not be harmed. Unfortunately, Peyton doesn’t know where Erin is now since she was moved after she left town. The only way she can get that information is to log into her profile at work, not something easy to do 30,000 feet in the air, but Samantha gives her the warning that she has until the plane lands to get the information. Peyton makes an attempt to get help by planting a note in the lavatory but that does not pan out as she had hoped when it becomes clear that Samantha isn’t the only person on the plane working against her. Now Peyton is forced to log in to her office computer — but they hit a Wifi blind spot and she’s stuck until it comes back — and she needs approval from the office before she can log in remotely. After getting a call from Lucy’s bestie about her not showing up for the big game, Ryan begins to put things together and asks another officer to help him by changing the address of the safe house to his own address to set a trap for whoever is coming for Erin. They get that changed and Peyton is able to log in and gives the address to Samantha, knowing it’s a set-up now to trap her accomplices. But Samantha still refuses to give the okay to release Lucy until they have Erin, so she texts the hoodied person the address. Lucy, though, has managed to cut herself out of her rope ties with a razor blade before the person takes her to the location. The plane lands and the police board, but Samantha takes Erin’s badge and pretends to be her and for some reason she just quickly leaves the plane … followed by Peyton without any resistance from the cops, but she loses Samantha in the airport. She’s then left to wonder if the ruse was a success, and we all later learn it was as the hoodied figure was revealed at Ryan’s house (thanks to Lucy because he had gotten the upper hand on Ryan and nearly choked him out before she hit the guy on the head with a rock), and Samantha confronts the person who was working against her from within the department. The identities of both people were pretty obvious, but there was still a small thrill knowing that the guesses made early in the film were correct. Still, it was a pretty decent thriller.
The script by Amy Irons, from a story by her and Richard Switzer, manages to play things out in a mostly logical manner. They build up the stories and the characters, but have to throw in a red herring to make us believe Ryan has some connection to the attacks on Erin. Is he on the list? There is one name that is an alias and he seems very interested in seeing that list. Just as he did in The Paradise Murders, Mo Sehgal has to play a scene where he stumbles over his words and appears to be guilty of something just to be an obvious distraction. Someone should cast him now as the bad guy because we’d really be surprised when it does turn out to be him. The other egregious plot device is Lucy not hearing the door open or see the person walk past her. Does she not possess peripheral vision (it’s possible, because that is a thing)? Her headphones obviously aren’t noise-cancelling, but do they give her super-hearing? That’s just one of those sloppy pieces of writing that makes you want to throw your remote at the TV. Those things aside the story works pretty well, and its interesting to see how more characters come into the conspiracy. Even when Lucy manages to get her ropes cut doesn’t feel too over-the-top (and there is a nice line to justify her actions). The story really holds your interest and while the ending may fumble a bit — how did Samantha and Peyton both get off the plane without any police intervention? — and a final confrontation between Peyton and Samantha is over much too quickly (we needed a Dynasty-style catfight by that point), I’m not mad at any of it. It was a solid piece of entertainment, and director Andres Beltran manages to sustain the mystery, although there is one shot of the hoodied figure as he turns his head, and even though it is just a quick flash of his profile it completely gives away his identity. It’s so quick that some may miss it, but if you’re paying attention you will catch that flash, so was this intentional or not? If it was not intentional, all that was needed was just a quick edit of a frame or two before the head turn or some digital darkening to conceal the face. There is one unintentionally hilarious moment when the plane hits some turbulence and someone decided to add some ADR of the passengers all screaming as if the plane was going down. That was certainly a choice, but not the right one.
Lifetime
The performances are pretty solid as well. Some people may have a problem with Kristina Clifford’s portrayal of Detective Peyton Sherman, as she often comes off as flat and emotionless … but that is how she is supposed to act while on duty, and it serves her well under the high pressure situation on the plane. She does soften her demeanor when she’s with Lucy and Ryan, but she is focused on her job and keeping Erin safe. She allows us to see the panic bubbling just under the surface she she struggles to find a way out of the situation, but just as when she’s on the job she has to keep a cool head. It was refreshing to see a detective on a Lifetime movie not be a cold, callous person toward the one they were to be protecting, not treating the victim as a suspect. It all works beautifully thanks to Clifford’s performance. While she doesn’t appear until about midway into the story, Kayla Raelle (who was just seen two days earlier as the star of The Paradise Murders) is also terrific as Samantha, a full 180 from the role of Emma. She comes off as so charming at first, but when she reveals her true intentions her behavior carries an undercurrent of real threat to Peyton. I honestly didn’t even realize it was the same actress from both movies, that’s how good and different her performance was. She really was able to show some range between the mousy Emma and the dangerous Samantha that it makes me eager to see what she does next.
As for the supporting cast, as mentioned Mo Sehgal seems to have patented that flabbergasted character who is always set up as a red herring. He had the same type of character in The Paradise Murders, so he always seems suspicious as if he is the insider. He does finally get to snap into action and takes charge once he realizes what’s going on — which is actually a relief because it would have sucked if he was actually working against Peyton and put Lucy in danger as they all seem to have a really good relationship outside of the office. But that he can make us believe he’s a co-conspirator and then shows he isn’t is a testament to his skills. Luna Rivera also does a nice job as Lucy, even when she is given that dumb bit of business leading up to her kidnapping, but she does not allow Lucy to become a victim, taking her fate into her own hands. It’s nice that she’s also written to have good relationships with both her mother and Ryan, never coming off as a bratty, entitled teenager.
Sami Nye makes Erin a bit of a complicated character, someone it’s difficult to feel much sympathy for. She doesn’t seem genuine with her podcast audience, and she also seems to think very highly of herself when she tells Peyton that ‘famous people write tell-alls all the time’. Girl, you’re a podcaster (not that there aren’t famous podcasters but I’d wager they have a much more niche audience and little name recognition among the general public as opposed to a powerful actor or politician). She generally rude to Peyton as well, but her initial reaction to Peyton at the hospital makes sense when it becomes clear with the reveal of the insider at the station that she did not make a specific request for a female officer. But if Erin is supposed to be someone who thinks she is above everyone else, then Nye did a fantastic job. Austin Valli as Andrew really pours on the lovelorn puppy dog act so well that you never know — unless you’re paying attention — if he’s involved in the plot against Erin or not. And it’s still not clear by the end if he really was a sleeper agent the whole time he was with her, or if he was just a patsy working for the person trying to silence Erin. The one performance that was just too on the nose was the one from Terry Woodberry as the precinct captain. His line delivery was either patronizing or too obvious and you won’t for a second not think he is part of the plot against Erin. His performance never felt natural, a bit too stagey, like he was wearing a sign that screams, ‘I did it!’ There was a similar issue with his performance in Secrets to Kill For in the way he just keeps the audience at arms length, never connecting with him, while always feeling that he’s hiding something. I don’t know if that was a choice of his or the director, but it just feels out of place among the other performances.
Overall, Brace for Danger, even with some of its silly plot devices and questionable acting choices, still works pretty well as an entertaining mystery-thriller buoyed by two terrific performances from Kristina Clifford and Kayla Raelle, flying higher than Cabin Pressure thanks to the skills of the cast and crew. This is one flight you may want to board after all.
Brace for Danger has a run time of 1 hour 27 minutes, and is rated TV-14.