Let's Leave the Lifetime Movies to Lifetime, Shall We Netflix?

Netflix’s Brazen attempt to rip-off
Lifetime schlock.

Last December I cancelled my subscription to the Lifetime Movie Club. Though the service brought me plenty of joy for the year I had it —not to mention material—it was beginning to bring more sighs and shrugs than shits and giggles. The monthly $4.99 subscription fee may not be much, but it’s too much to spend on meh.

Besides, subscribing to whole other streaming service might not be necessary. In its desperate bid to become our everything, Netflix has been offering its own versions of Lifetime movies, because it knows that the one thing viewers crave when subscribing to a streaming service is basic cable content. Last month I watched Netflix’s stab at Hallmark/Lifetime’s stab at schmaltzy holiday inclusivity, the sugar-coated gay romcom Single All the Way. This month, I decided to check out the streaming service’s new Lifetimey thriller, BRAZEN, starring Alyssa Milano, a weirdly controversial casting choice.

Milano plays Grace Miller, an author of mystery novels and thrillers that are so popular that her bookstore appearances are standing room only.

Her books may also be the only ones stocked in this mall atrium.

Grace’s latest novel is Brazen Virtue, the same title as the Nora Roberts’ novel on which Brazen is based. How meta! The passage Grace reads from it, describing an “unremarkable” murder victim and wondering if she had a secret life, might have counted as foreshadowing if Brazen had the patience to let us discover those secrets in due time, instead of revealing them in the movie’s prologue. Grace’s readers are enthralled and applaud as if they just heard Beyoncé perform her latest. “That was the best turn-out we’ve had all year,” gushes the bookstore’s manager. “Keep writing, Grace Miller. You’re the best.” Interestingly, her fans keep their distance, which is telling because wait until you get to know Grace!

You see, Grace is supposed to be a strong, confident woman. Unfortunately, to convey her strength screenwriters Edithe Swensen and Donald Martin have made her into a self-satisfied asshole, someone who is superior in all things, be it investigating crimes or uncorking wine bottles. Of course, her greatness comes at a cost: all other characters must be slightly (or a lot) dumber. Near the movie’s climax, she actually tells a police captain to make sure the evidence they have on a suspect is solid to ensure the arrest sticks. That the captain doesn’t respond with a well-deserved “No shit, Sherlock” should tell you how far up Grace’s ass this movie is.

Despite Grace’s grating personality, she is the first person her sister Kathleen (Emily Ullerup) calls when she needs help. Grace immediately ditches her book tour to fly to D.C. so she can criticize her sister’s taste in wine, as well as pointedly bring up Kathleen’s past mistakes: a disastrous marriage, a drug addiction (just pills; she wasn’t a filthy heroin addict or scabby faced tweaker), leaving her son behind when she left her husband.

Kathleen assures Grace that she’s gotten her shit together. She’s kicked “the meds” and is now teaching English at an exclusive private school. She’s also decided to fight to regain custody of her son. Because this is an expensive undertaking, she needs money, which is why she called Grace—not for a loan, but for Grace to consent to a second mortgage on the house they inherited from their parents and that Kathleen now lives in. Grace, likely thinking, I cut my book tour short for this?, is dubious the loan will provide enough money to finance the impending legal battle, but Kathleen assures her she’s working on “other things” to raise the money.

But enough about Kathleen and her problems. The next morning, while Kathleen’s at her day job of teaching rich kids about Shakespeare, Grace tries to work on a new book but can’t concentrate because her sister’s neighbor keeps firing up a buzzsaw every few seconds. Grace, incensed that someone would have the audacity to work on a construction project at 10 a.m. on a weekday, complains because of course she does. But then, upon seeing that the neighbor is played by Sam Page, decides to make peace and bring him an empty mug that she says contains coffee. The neighbor, Ed, doesn’t do caffeine, but Grace forgives him because it turns out that Ed is a huge fan of her work. Making the previous sentence a bit more implausible is that Ed is also a detective on the D.C. police force. A cop who doesn’t consume caffeine? I’m not buying it, just as you won’t buy that he’s immediately attracted to Grace, but who knows. Maybe her books are just that good.

Sam Page (left) is ready to be your new Greg Evigan.

Their unlikely romance stalls temporarily when Grace returns from her first date with Ed to discover Kathleen murdered. She also discovers the nature of the “other things” Kathleen was working on to pad her bank account: doing cam shows as a dominatrix named Desiree. 

Beats the hell out of being an Uber driver.

We in the audience knew this secret already as it’s revealed before the opening credits, presumably to hook us with the salacious stuff. Except Kathleen’s kinky internet show is tame enough to make her viewers think they’ve accidentally logged on to Disney+ (“Well, I guess I can rub one out to Maleficent.”) I’m not suggesting she be wearing nothing but thigh-high boots and a clit ring, but maybe spice things up with some puppy play, or leading her viewers through elaborate omorashi scenarios instead of this tired whip cracking crap.

But I digress. The prime suspect is Kathleen’s ex, Jonathan (David Lewis). David is a smug prick, but he’s got an air-tight alibi and he’s too obvious besides. He also provides Brazen with its best scene.

Grace, perfect at everything else, also throws a mean left hook.

Finding Kathleen’s killer is further complicated when other online dominatrixes are murdered. Now there’s the possibility that the cops are dealing with a serial killer, one who is targeting PG-rated doms. Seriously, movie, no one is paying $40 a month to watch moms do steampunk cosplay.

Especially when they wear their Maidenform One Fab Fit®
underneath their leather corsets.

But stopping a serial killer isn’t the only thing the cops are up against. They also have to contend with Grace’s “help.”

Though Ed was given a week off for solving a big case (or maybe he’d already put in for the time, which is more believable), he forfeits his PTO in favor of investigating the murder of his love interest’s sister. No good deed goes unpunished, of course. Grace doesn’t just do the typical mystery/thriller thing of trying to solve her sister’s murder on her own, or even unofficially assisting Ed on the downlow. No, she wants to be an active member of the investigating team—and Ed’s captain (Alison Araya) allows it.

With Grace now appointed as a consultant, Ed and his partner Ben (Malachi Weir) are now having to suffer her company as she accompanies them to interview suspects. Ben is strangely accepting of this arrangement, but then, Ben’s a pretty chill guy. Yet even Ben gives their “consultant” an eat shit look when she barges into a meeting between the detectives and the captain to share evidence she’s turned up from her solo sleuthing.

When their two most likely suspects/obvious red herrings are cleared, there’s only one thing left to do, and that one thing telegraphed by a lingering shot of one of Kathleen’s leather costumes laid out on display on the bed of her “dungeon.” 

The star of Poison Ivy II shows us she’s still got it!

Safe to Assume the Book is Better

Phone sex was Kathleen’s
porny source of extra cash in
the book as it was originally
published in 1988.

I’ve only read only one Nora Roberts novel, ever: Montana Sky. An aunt gave it to me, evidently thinking I’d read anything plucked from a CVS book rack (that’s fair). I thought it was all right, but not really my thing. The only part of the book that stuck with me was a sex scene in which a character rides her lover “hard and fast and well.” Still, while I’ve never read Roberts’ Brazen Virtue, I think I can say with some confidence that the novel is better than its Netflix adaptation.

It’s not that Brazen is a complete piece of shit. Monika Mitchell’s directing is competent if uninspired and, apart from some flat performances by actors in minor roles, the acting is decent enough, though no one should hold their breath for an Emmy nomination. It’s just that the movie is so goddamned soulless. It’s a thriller without suspense; a romance without heat. As irritating as I found the character of Grace (just the character; Milano’s performance is fine), hating her was what kept me invested in the movie. That, and hoping Sam Page would strip down to boxer briefs at some point (spoiler: he doesn’t). You’d do better to just watch an episode of Law & Order: SVU.

At the end of the day, the only thing that sets Brazen apart from any other Lifetime movie is it’s on Netflix. I don’t think I’d be any more forgiving had it been an official Lifetime movie, but then my expectations would be calibrated accordingly. On Lifetime, Brazen would rank among its more mediocre offerings—too proficient to enjoy ironically, not good enough to merit anyone’s time. On Netflix, it’s just one more example of the streaming service’s putting quantity over quality. If $4.99/month is too much to spend on meh on the Lifetime Movie Club, Netflix’s (increasing) fees are tantamount to robbery. Considering Netflix’s recent numbers, the streamer might do better to focus less on trying to be all things to all viewers and more on offering content that’s actually worth watching.

Short Takes: 'The Hater' (2020) ★★★

Director Jan Komasa’s The Hater (Sala samobójców. Hejte) is about a young Polish man who finds success by using social media to foment hate and paranoia. Which, too soon?

Making it a little easier to watch is the decision to tell the story more as a slow-burn, semi-satirical thriller than a drama about far-right politics. Tomasz (Maciej Musialowski), the titular hater, begins his journey to becoming a Machiavellian master of media manipulation from a place of failure. He’s kicked out of law school for plagiarism, then has his heart broken when he learns what his childhood crush Gabi (Vanessa Aleksander) really thinks about him. The latter happens via some DIY electronic eavesdropping, which should teach Tomasz a lesson. It does, but it’s the wrong one.

Tomasz talks his way into a job at an ethics-averse PR firm, quickly rising through the ranks when he launches a successful smear campaign against a client’s rival, to the delight of his boss Beata (Agata Kulesza), who cackles maniacally watching the rival’s tearful apology video, and the ire of her abusive asshole right-hand Kamil (Piotr Biedron). Tomasz is then tasked with getting dirt on Pawel Runicki (Maciej Stuhr), a progressive candidate in Warsaw’s mayoral race (you can see Tomasz’s ears perk up when he’s told bugging offices isn’t off the table). He outs Runicki as a homosexual, but that causes only a momentary dip in the candidate’s numbers. Far more successful are Tomasz’s xenophobic and Islamophobic posts, of which we’re all too familiar. But Tomasz isn’t content to just fan the flames; he wants to cause an explosion, and so he recruits Guzek (Adam Gradowski), a neck beard who vlogs about his love of guns and hatred of immigrants, to be his detonator.

The Hater is a sequel to Komasa’s 2011 film Suicide Room. I haven’t seen it yet, but from what I’ve read it’s also a story about the evils of social media, only focusing on one of its victims. In The Hater, Tomasz is on the other side, doing what he does for no greater reason than the thrill of stirring shit up, regardless of the politics (he has no qualms about playing both sides). He’s not a white supremacist, he’s a budding sociopath. Musialowski’s performance as Tomasz keeps us guessing by showing us occasional flashes of empathy or fear, but by the movie’s end he’s gone full Patrick Bateman—or Damien.

The movie has its weaknesses. Much of Mateusz Pacewicz’s script is a bit too on-the-nose, as if it is illustrating key points culled from a Polityka article examining the forces behind democracy’s decline, with some characterizations being less satirical than full-on parody (the mustache-twirling villainy of Beata and Kamil; Gabi’s liberal elite parents). Luckily, Komasa and his cast manage to keep the story grounded, even during some of its more far-fetched moments. The Hater is still a good movie, it’s just not a good time.