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3 out of 3 people found the following review useful:

Effective story about struggling with faith

Author: vchimpanzee from NC
1 February 2004

Emily Hayworth is a Quaker who works in a bank and has two daughters--Deborah, who is married and pregnant, and Janet, who is somewhat of a rebel. Emily wants Janet to come to work for her, but she wants no part of that life.

Meanwhile, Jimmy Flood has escaped from prison. After joining with two friends, he returns to the town where Emily lives, hoping she will help him as she did once before. But this time, the help he wants is several million dollars from an armored car shipment he is aware will take place.

Despite her strong faith, Emily must lie and steal because she fears for the lives of her family members. The other members of her church help, mostly by lying. These people must deal with difficult ethical decisions, knowing that it is probably better to commit sins than to allow people to die.

I didn't think much of Lynda Carter's performance at first, but the fact is Emily was quite an actress when she had to convince people everything was all right when it wasn't. In that way, Carter was very convincing, and as the movie went on I was very pleased with her performance. Colin Ferguson made quite an evil Jimmy, but he did show a tender side when his big secret was revealed. The faith of the Quakers was shown effectively, and we could get an idea of what their services were like. Even though an hour of silence is said to be a big part of their worship, we couldn't have been patient enough to see that. And we saw the ethical struggles, the lack of simple solutions, that faith would require.

I thought the movie was more violent than it had to be. Still, the values the movie taught balanced the bad parts. It was a pretty good effort.

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Nothing in my life has prepared me for this.

Author: sol1218 from brooklyn NY
1 June 2005

**SPOILERS** Breaking out of a Florida prison Jimmy and Digby, Colin Ferguson & Phillip Jerrett, hook up with their outside contact Lester,Michael A. Miranda. After knocking off two gun runners and taking a load of guns and ammunition from them make their way up north to lake George New York, Jimmy's home town.

In jail for a slew of crimes all over the eastern seaboard, including the murder of the Lake George Sheriff John Dolan's (Eugene Robert Glazer) brother, Jimmy has been planing to rob the Lake George Hayworth Savings Bank all the time that he was incarcerated in Florida.

The bank owned and run by Emily Hayworth, Lynda Carter, is to have a shipment of some 4 million dollars taken out the afternoon Jimmy & Co. arrived in town and even more so he knows and lived with Emily's family before he ended up behind bars.

Lynda Carter sheds her glamorous image for the Quaker matriarch Emily Hayworth who's faith in her fellow man as well as deep belief in a forgiving and loving God is the glue that holds the movie "A Prayer in the Dark" together despite it's somewhat unconvincing ending.

Breaking into the Hayworth's home the three hoods hold Emily and her husband Marcus, Karl Pruner, as well as her daughter Janet, Teri Polo,and two close friends David and Deborah, Matthew Bennett & Lindsey Connell, hostage. Forcing Emily and David to go to her bank and steal the 4 million in cash and threatening to murder her husband and friends if she didn't come back with the money by noon Emily decides not to go along with Jimmy's plan. Knowing that he'll kill them all no matter what she does for him, that's just how crazy and homicidal he is.

Cutting off the electricity ,with the help of her Quaker friends, to her house where the hostages are kept Emily thus has the Jimmy gang in total confusion to what's happening in the outside world and unable to kill the hostages in order not to alert the police if they heard the gunshots. Emily's real reason for her actions was to prevent anyone in and out of the house from being killed; that's just how much she felt for the value of human life.

Emily turned out to be right about Jimmy in his plans to blow up the house with the hostages and well as his fellow hoodlums inside and then make his getaway with a motorboat and have the money all to himself almost impossible. There's also a side plot in the movie between Emily's young daughter Janet and Jimmy who it turns out were lovers when he lived at the Hayworth home five years ago.

Jimmy was thrown out of his house by his drunken father and accepted with no questions asked by the kind hearted Hayworth family before he turned bad and became a hardened criminal.For a moment you get the impression that Jimmy and Janet were really together on this because Janet just happened to arrive home the day Jimmy escaped from jail.

Moving and heartfelt ending, even though it takes a lot of faith to accept it, with Emily showing that love and goodness is more powerful and beats guns and explosives every time.

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Lynda Carter gives a terriffic performance.

Author: ( from australia
9 April 2000

An interesting and sometimes harrowing story. Lynda Carter appears to outdo herself yet again; this is why she should be in feature films, she is very passionate about her roles. She makes films worthwhile with every performance. Great viewing!

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1 out of 2 people found the following review useful:

family values meets cinematic bank terrorism

Author: UNISOM
21 October 2001

A tv film about bank terroists who take hostages for bank loot and high profits amid casualties and gun fire. the seeminly typical story is also a drama when one of the terror thugs is a former family member who helps impriison his former family at gun point. This was a interesting film. i saw almost the entire film along wiht the ending. A good tv film. I liked the movie as it was better than most tv fare. I find most tv movies lame except for a few. The winners on the tv movie meter being projects like BILL, WW3 (circa 1983 version), and V, etc. Thyis film was a film about crime and family ties. The writing persepective was left on the political meter with a dash of political correctness, yet this is refreshign from a tv standpoint as we all drown on the far right froth of such tv series as BLUE THUNDER. A intersting diversion for a afternoon. Similar in composition to most LIFETIME films...this film features strong female roles. A good film.

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