Mind Prey (1999)
Mind Prey is an adaptation of the John Sandford mystery novel of the same name, featuring Sandford's famous detective Lucas Davenport. Andi Manette (Sheila Helley), a well respected psychiatrist, and her two daughters have been kidnapped and detective Lucas Davenport (Eriq La Salle) is about to meet his ultimate nemesis in their sadistic captor, John Mail (Titus Welliver). Davenport and Mail both have a penchant for computer games and gaming culture. Their shared interest helps Davenport to understand and guess the kidnapper's next move, but the victims are put in further danger when Mail forces Davenport into a cruel and insane cat-and-mouse game.
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Well Deserved Praise
just watch it!
Absolutely Fantastic
The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.
I just saw this movie for the first time last night. I was very disappointed. The storyline seemed to be very close to the book, but whoever did the casting, has no idea of what Davenport, Weather, Sloan or anyone else are like. Eriq La Salle as Davenport? Not even close. I have been reading the prey books for years and am a huge fan, I have always had a mental picture of Lucas in my head and La Salle is just not it, he is a little to mild-mannered. I have always wanted someone to make a movie of the prey books,and I knew it would be hard to cast Lucas, but they could have done better than that. La Salle wasn't cool enough to play Davenport. And Davenport has always driven a Porsche! That's like his trademark! All in all, I wasn't impressed with the movie and I don't think Sanford would be either.
But as one of the many fans of John Sanford out there, this film is probably the worst casting job I'd ever seen! I will agree with another 'critic' that the roles of Sloan (Bill MacDonald) and Marie Roux (Jayne Eastwood) were well cast, very believable characters, but Eric LaSalle as Lucas and Nicole Ari Parker as Weather just did NOT fit!! And Lucas drives a Porsche...not a PONTIAC!!! And when did he start working for the 'Minnesota PD'???I realize that there has to be a LITTLE 'artistic license' when it comes to making a movie like this, but they need get the casting a little closer to looking like they are described in the book, and maybe get the plot a little closer also. I'll give this one three stars simply because it DID show a little of the darker side of Lucas, but overall, they missed it!!
Although the ABC version of Mind Prey was fairly entertaining, I was nevertheless disappointed by the writers' characterization of Lucas Davenport. The Eriq LaSalle version has almost no similarity to the character as carefully developed by the Prey author, John Sandford.If this does become a series, I would certainly watch again.And did I hear Davenport say "Minnesota PD"? What gives with that?
If you are a fan of John Sandford's awesome Prey novels, you will NOT like this movie. Even though I don't consider myself a purist, Eric LaSalle has taken way too many liberties in adapting this great novel to suit his needs/wants. (I thought I saw him name somewhere as a Producer).If you haven't read any of Sandford's books, start now. Don't let the disappointment of this Hollywood-ized version lead you to believe that Sandford is just another hack.The only two characters in the TV movie that even closely resembled the picture I had in my mind's eye are Bill MacDonald as Detective Sloan and Jayne Eastwood as Police Chief Roux and their characters were barely developed to the point where I could like them as much as their parchment-dwelling counterparts.One of the reasons I like the characters in the novels is that they are real. LaSalle's Lucas Davenport is just another TV cop who is Superman - doing everything himself, surrounded by cops who would be lost without him.In case you hadn't noticed, I didn't like this movie. Within the first five minutes, I was tempted to turn it off. Then, I decided that I wanted to write this review, so I struggled through it for the sake of 'knowing what I was writing about.' If you are tempted to see this as a re-run, don't. Get the book. Better yet, get Rules Of Prey (the first of nine Lucas Davenport novels by Sandford thus far) and start the journey the right way. Hmph.