A Fall from Grace

A Fall from Grace (2020)
Director: Tyler Perry
Actors: Bresha Webb, Crystal Fox, Phylicia Rashad

Synopsis: Jasmine (Bresha Webb) works as a public defence lawyer and picks up a seemingly simple plea case about accused spousal murderer, Grace (Crystal Fox). Grace’s past history doesn’t suggest a murderous character, so Jasmine sets trying to unpick the circumstances leading to the ‘crime’.

Review: It feels mean to pick holes in this most trashy of courtroom thrillers – the sort of made-for-TV movie you’ll often find on the afternoon slot on Channel 5, for example. Still, a critic’s gotta do, what a critic’s gotta do – and cheapness of budget and shortness of production time shouldn’t necessarily equal poverty of output.

Anyway, the most obvious point to make is that Tyler Perry’s conception of the medium is strictly functional. I know he only had five days to shoot the whole script, but, boy, does he just block the scene, point the camera, direct the traffic, and cut! The opening suicide scene involving Jasmine’s policeman husband is so amateurishly staged that it’s a pretty good harbinger for what’s to come with the rest of the film. My personal favourite example of the production’s overall shoddiness is the scene in the diner where Grace and Shannon are having their first date. There’s an extra in the background, well in view, who is staring right at the camera and just prodding his food, rather than even attempting to feign conversation and eating. The fact that Perry cuts a number of times to this camera angle and that extra is doing the same gawping each time truly does beggar belief.

Perry’s penmanship isn’t much better either. The middle two-quarters of the film are literally just exposition and backstory as Grace narrates her life pre-murder to Jasmine. In fact, the whole film is just a vapid exercise in delivering the audience to the only thrilling moment which is the poor man’s Silence of the Lambs twist ending. And I said I wasn’t going to pick holes? Well I renege on that. Here are just a few (spoiler alert) that might have worked better if they’d been even slightly addressed. Why are there so many women downstairs at the end – that’s an industrial level of villainy right there. And why is nobody looking for 20+ missing women? Why is one of these women just wandering about all the time? And aren’t there easier ways for Sarah and son to hustle for money? Despite all this, if you like losing yourself in the cinematic equivalent of a trashy page-turner, this may just divert you enough. (April 2020)