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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
True To Life, June 7, 2005
This review is from: Blind Faith [VHS] (VHS Tape)
This movie faithfully followed the best seller by Joe McGinnis (Fatal Vision, Cruel Doubt, etc.) and chronicles a desperate man motivated by the twin devils of lust and greed, who arranged for the murder of his wife to collect $1.5 million in insurance. The focus of the film is less on the actual crime than the terrible fallout it produced in his three sons, two in college and one in junior high school, two of whom ultimately come to a realization no child should have to make: The father they believed in and supported did, indeed, arrange their mother's murder. Well acted (Joanna Kerns is particularly good) and directed. Highly recommended.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A killer in the family, January 9, 2003
This review is from: Blind Faith [VHS] (VHS Tape)
In 1986, a New Jersey state court sent Robert O. Marshall, a fomer insurance executive, to Death Row after a jury found him guilty in the murder-for-hire two years earlier of his wife, Maria. Earlier this year - 2006 - an appeallate court vacated the death sentence and reduced Marshall's sentence to life. That development rekindles this 1990 NBC-TV pic based on the true-crime novel by Joe McGinnis (of controversial "Fatal Vision" fame). "Blind Faith" is a compelling and faithful telling of the dynamics that trigger Maria Marshall's arranged killing in September 1984 and is so titled in reference to the painful acceptance by the couple's three sons that their father may have hired the gun that killed their mother. The late Robert Urich has the enormous burden of portraying the cowardly sociopath and self-indulgent, self-absorbed Marshall. As a hard-driven insurance salesman with a drop-dead beautiful wife and three privileged children in an upper middle class Norman Rockwell neighborhood in Toms River, N.J., Marshall was - according to prosecution evidence - drowning in debt to the tune of more than $300,000. Motivated by a $1.5 million life insurance policy on his wife, along with his carrying on an extramarital fling with a local vixen, Marshall conconcts the murder-for-hire scheme to get his wife out of the picture and thereby living happily ever after with his debt wiped out (with about $1.2 million left for pocket change) and frolicking openly with his new squeeze. Urich is magnificent in the role and plays Marshall with no redeeming qualities. As Marshall's doomed spouse, Joanna Kerns is her husband's antithesis that, also by most published sources, defined the real lady. Though Maria knows nothing of her fate, she's painfully aware of her husband's philandering but discards a planned divorce to salvage her marriage (why to man like her husband is a mystery). Along with Maria as a victim, though, are the couple's three sons, played wrenchingly by Jay Underwood, David Barry Gray and Johnny Galecki. And an A-list of other supporting players makes "Blind Faith" an overall well-acted piece, including Doris Roberts ("Everyone Loves Raymond") as a well-intentioned but totally blind family friend whose support of Rob Marshall never waivers; superlative character actor Dennis Farina as the prosecutor who sets his sights on justice; William Forsythe and David Andrews as the two hired guns; and daytime soap femme fatal Robin Strasser as Marshall's on-the-side squeeze. But it is Urich's showcase in this one, and so convincing is he that our final word about the real Marshall is good riddance.
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15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
FANTASTIC, TRUE TO LIFE STORY., June 17, 2004
By A Customer
This review is from: Blind Faith [VHS] (VHS Tape)
To the person who wrote the first review...this was in no way a sleazy movie. It was a true depiction of a diabolical self-centered sociopath who killed his wife for greed, and the horrific fall-out. By the way, this movie also was made with the main character's oldest son on the set as an advisor. Learn your facts. If you don't like true crime stories, don't waste your money the next time!
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