Nozz Review of The Wrong Woman

The Wrong Woman (2013 TV Movie)

Okay till it comes down with chickflickitis in the middle

[6/10 · 7 March 2015]

One obviously doesn't turn Hitchcock's The Wrong Man into The Wrong Woman just for novelty's sake. I was expecting a chick flick, so I wasn't surprised or disappointed when I found that the heroine lives in a world where all men are beasts. At least they're all interesting beasts, and like the protagonist of Hitchcock's movie the heroine here is unprepared and helpless when evidence seems to implicate her in a crime she didn't commit so I was looking forward to a fairly faithful remake. I didn't mind Danica McKellar's portrayal of helplessness; I think that in the real world that's how we behave when we're blindsided. Unfortunately, in the middle the movie loses its credibility when Mister Wonderful appears, at around the same time it develops that (unlike the Hitchcock movie) there is more than bad luck behind the false accusation, and perhaps worst of all the heroine remarks "I studied law" to justify the transformation of the movie into a women's empowerment story as she goes up against the system-- to the admiration, and with the help, of Mister Wonderful. However, unlike some sharper viewers who have commented here, I was unprepared for the ending and although I found it abrupt-- well, so was the ending to North by Northwest; and the welcome addition of an old-fashioned suspense scene in the last ten minutes of The Wrong Woman left me in a gratified and forgiving frame of mind.