With a solid cast, direction from Britain's John Schlesinger - who jangled copious nerves with Marathon Man and Pacific Heights - and the controversy-courting subject matter of a child's horrific rape and murder and a mother's hunger for revenge, this gears up as a tense and thought-provoking thriller. Sadly, with formula too often favoured to invention and its social message lost in histrionics, the potency of the material fizzles out.
Field is the smart but dowdy mother of two whose life is blown apart when her elder daughter (Olivia Brunette) dies at the hands of a fruitcake psychopath (Sutherland). His only motive appears to be a desire to do evil, something which manifests itself in a number of characteristics (pouring coffee over a dog, much spitting, etc.) that suggest his sanity has long since departed. But when a court lets him off on a technicality, the mother's grief turns to anger and an obsession with revenge that hubbie Harris can do little to subdue.
Thereafter, being predictable doesn't necessarily mean that a movie can't be entertaining, but Schlesinger relies on unpleasant shocks - witness two disturbing murder scenes, each tottering perilously between the powerful and the gratuitous - instead of psychological tension building or ingenious plot twists.