Lifetime
Lifetime dips back into the true-life story ‘Ripped from the Headlines’ movie with its latest ‘Truly Unbelievable Movie’, Searching for a Serial Killer: The Regina Smith Story, which tells the story of police cadet Regina Smith and her involvement in the case of a serial killer stalking the backstreets of Dallas.
The story opens with a very young Regina, her mother taking her and fleeing an abusive relationship. Flash-forward 25 years and Regina seems to have found herself in a similar situation, taking herself and her daughter out of an abusive situation, Regina focusing on her life-long goal of becoming a police officer. She does not make the best impression on her first day of training, but she quickly earns the respect of her commanding officer and the others in her cadet training class (all men, it should be noted, making her journey all the more challenging). Smith persevered, passed the training and became a cadet, partnered with cadet Eddie in some of the most dangerous streets of Dallas, mainly populated by sex workers, many of whom Smith new in her personal life (one attended the same church as Smith). Smith quickly became a crusader to try to get these women off the streets and into better lives, a mission amplified when the one she knew best was found dead, her eyes surgically removed. When a second woman was found dead in the same manner — a shot to the head, eyes removed — the Dallas police, which had been mired in the heights of the crack crisis (this is the early 1990s), finally began to take Smith’s concerns seriously, fearing they now had a serial killer on their hands. The death of a third woman only validated those fears, putting newbies Smith and her partner at the head of the case. Meanwhile, she’s trying to juggle her personal life with her daughter — more often than not getting home much later than planned because of the case — and dating, then marrying, a SWAT officer named Norm and the dangers that come with his profession. But with the initial reluctance of the department to take Smith seriously, and the resistance of the sex workers to speak directly to the police, will Smith be able to solve the case, of what became dubbed by the press, of the Eyeball Killer?
Lifetime’s Searching for a Serial Killer: The Regina Smith Story is one of the network’s more gripping and higher quality productions, given a certain authenticity by having the real Regina Smith on board as an executive producer, able to tell her story as realistically as possible (though reading the facts of the case, some elements of the killer and how he was tracked down have been ‘enhanced’ for dramatic purposes), using real names and pretty accurate descriptions of the case (though the eyeball removal was not discovered or disclosed at the scene of the first crime as seen in the movie, and a pink rain slicker in the movie was yellow in real life). The screenplay by Conor Allyn and Benjamin Anderson manages to condense a lot of story into a ninety-minute run time coherently, while director Wendy Ord (Don’t Scream, It’s Me!) keeps things moving smoothly without any jarring lapses in time. It all flows quite naturally even though there is no indication of how long this case actually lasted.
The film really succeeds thanks to the powerful performance by Karrueche Tran as Smith. Being familiar with Tran only from her appearances on MTV’s Ridiculousness makes one curious to see if she can pull off a major role like this. Of course, viewers of TNT’s Claws and Peacock’s Bel-Air know she has the chops and she acquits herself well here with a totally natural performance. She’s completely believable as a mother and as a woman dedicated to her profession, someone who truly cares about the women she sees on her beat. Even as the story has to speed through her dating and marriage to Norm, her chemistry with Christopher Russell feels authentic. You can’t help but come away impressed with Tran’s performance, and hope that she gets to go on to even bigger and better things in her career.
Blair Penner is also quite good as her partner Eddie. Penner could have played the character as a complete chauvinist, a man who looks down on the one woman in the academy, belittling her attempts to be one of them, but he plays the character as a man who is initially resistant to Smith, but as she progresses she begins to earn his respect. He can also see she is passionate about helping the women on their beat, but he manages to hold her to the book of their job without coming off as over-bearing (he could have easily let her emotions dictate her actions, letting her bury herself, but that would have reflected badly on him as well so there is some self-preservation going on there along with the mutual respect). Penner has a natural chemistry with Tran that never crosses over into the romantic, which makes the partnership all the move realistic.
Roark Critchlow, who was one of the the escaped inmates in Don’t Scream, It’s Me!, trades in his orange jumpsuit for the jacket and tie of a detective. He has to be more of a hard-ass when it comes to Smith because as a cadet she is slightly over-stepping her boundaries, but as the case progresses Critchlow allows Detective Silva to let down his walls and actually listens to — and dare we say admires — Smith’s dedication to her work. Critchlow manages to make Silva professional but not unlikable. We understand his by-the-book approach to the job, and can accept how he begins to accept Smith’s approach to the case. The character could have very easily become a hard-nosed cliché, a man upset by a woman, particularly a freshly minted cadet, basically stepping on his toes but Critchlow balances the professionalism with the ego Silva must have felt was bring bruised. Overall, a really good performance.
It’s funny to see Christopher Russell in this movie on the same night and time that he appeared on Hallmark Channel’s Santa Tell Me (and only a couple of weeks after starring in Hallmark’s Operation Nutcracker), but he again proves that he just oozes charm no matter the role. Even as a weathered SWAT officer, Russell’s Norm shows he has a soft side when it comes to his personal life and the relationship he forms with Tran in a short period of time makes you believe these two people did have a spark that led to a romance and marriage. The way he plays Norm as a totally supportive partner, not hesitating for a moment to accept her daughter as his, only makes the tragedy of their relationship all the more emotional for the viewer. Russell makes that much of an impression with his short screen time.
All of the actresses playing the sex workers are also very good, very realistic, never coming off as caricatures. Ted Cole is creepy as the killer, Charles Albright, with Justine Warrington just a bit too over-the-top as his girlfriend Irene (her performance just screams red flags, even if she didn’t know what Albright was up to). Overall, Searching for a Serial Killer: The Regina Smith Story tells a gripping true story without fudging the facts too much with some solid writing and directing, and excellent performances from a stellar cast. And that it has the approval of Smith allows one to watch the movie without feeling the guilt of the subjects being exploited.
Searching for a Serial Killer: The Regina Smith Story has a run time of 1 hour 30 minutes, and is rated TV-14.
Official Trailer | Searching for a Serial Killer: The Regina Smith Story
Lifetime
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