The Two Mr. Kissels (2008)

Awesome Movie

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Lifetime Television's "The Two Mr. Kissels," based on the true story of two murdered brothers, stars John Stamos as Andrew Kissel, Anson Mount as Robert Kissel, and Robin Tunney as Robert's wife, Nancy. Somehow, a fascinating story was rendered fairly uninteresting by the script. With better writing, this might have been a compelling, old-fashioned two-parter, as there is certainly enough material out there.The Kissel brothers were wealthy and seemingly successful young men - Robert was a brilliant businessman whose career had an upward trajectory. Unfortunately, he married a narcissistic money-grubber (Tunney) who falls for a cable guy (in real life a stereo repairman) and decides she's better off with all of the cash and no husband. Andrew could have been a successful entrepreneur, but he needed to come up to par with his brother and make a big splash. He becomes a cocaine-addicted, womanizing con artist, married to a successful woman who truly loves him and turns a blind eye to his shady deals and late nights.The murders of both men are handled well, but one never gets a strong sense of the relationship between the two brothers or any handle on the character of Robert. John Stamos does a good job with the material, but the best role in the film belongs to Robin Tunney as Nancy. She's excellent. It's really the only fleshed out part in the film.There was a good deal more that went on in this real-life saga, including in court. In the end, I felt that the script let down what should have been a fascinating story.

The Two Mr. Kissels is quite possibly the worst TV movie I have ever seen. Without a doubt, the commercial interruptions were the high points of the experience.The script was ridiculous, the acting flat and the direction useless. I waited and listened to useless dialog hoping for the film to take some direction. It never happened.I wish I could cite some worthwhile attribute of this film. Unfortunately there was none In spite of the boredom, I hung in for the entire horrid experience. The only relief came when the end titles appeared! This trash is not worth one moment of anyone's time! 1/10

Firstly, I know about the subject matter. It is based on a true story and many of the main characters are real people (this is a docudrama) and some have different names. The characters resemble the actual people but look nothing like the real people involved and some of the facts are altered or left out. I'm not sure if this is because of potential liability or threatened legal action or the producers only used the actual events as a jumping-off point and didn't think they were doing a documentary, so accuracy was not tantamount. Also, the time line was cleaned up and made easier to understand because there were other issues that were not included (Nancy's father planned on taking care of Robert's kids and then her brother wanted to care for them, etc.) so if you're watching this thinking this is all the way it was or were not familiar with the actual events, please understand there is a lot more information that was not included or was altered, so the movie is not accurate. The producers and the writer work around this by calling the movie a docudrama, which means as long as it has some truth to it, then that's okay but some details were basically mis-represented in any event.

Some very good individual scenes here, and an excellent performance from John Stamos (not so with Robin...who is just terribly miscast in this one)....however the whole is not as good as it's individual parts. Based on a true story, I had seen several documentaries about this really amazing case (Two brothers on separate Continent's are both murdered). Those documentaries are extremely fulfilling. This TV drama only touches on the highlights of the tragedies. Unfortunately, the wealth of material that was available to the writer wasn't used properly. Yes, as I've said, some VERY good, and well researched scenes. However, this TV movie basically only has acted sections of what really happened. Unfortunately, if you don't know enough about the case itself....this film won't make too much sense. But what is there is good....it's just not enough. Investigate the case before you see the film, and I'm sure you will agree.