No Good Deed.

Although barely rated above a modern B-Movie it’s the robustly physical and menacing performance from British actor Idris Elba that makes the American thriller No Good Deed (2014) worth a look, he manages to make you believe in his larger than life portrayal of Colin Evans. The movie is directed by another Brit Sam Miller who had previously worked with the star on the popular TV series Luther in which Elba plays a rather unpredictable police inspector serving in the Serious Crime Unit. Miller’s resume mainly lists TV drama’s but does included a couple of feature films including an appealing British romantic comedy drama Among Giants (1998) which starred Pete Postlethwaite and Rachel Griffith.

 

Loosing his appeal starts Edris Elba on a tragic journey. 

When Colin Evans is accused of being a malignant narcissist and fails to get his expected parole after serving a third of a fifteen sentence for murder he knows his chance will not come again for another five years. It’s during his transportation back to prison that he carries out a brutal escape killing both of his guards. High jacking a truck, he precedes to track down his former girlfriend and resume their fraught relationship. Discovering that she now has feelings for another man he murders her and making a hasty retreat crashes the truck and tricks his way into the house of Terri, a mother of two (played with a lot of vitality and strength by Taraji P Henson) whose husband is away on a business trip. Unaware at first of the nature of her late night visitor there develops a strange attraction between the two. But the question is where will it lead? An entertaining outing that the critics hated, but the public disagreed enough to make it a box office hit in the USA.