Touches You

Good movie but grossly overrated

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

This movie is my kind of movie. Suspense, Determination, True Friendship, Not giving up, Facing justice, Being justice. Holly didn't give up at all. She made sure the person was found. The thing that stood out the most is that she wasn't protecting herself and her own justice. She was focused on making sure the person who killed her best friend was put to justice. And Holly even put herself in danger's way to be a friend for her friend.

With Ottawa standing in for Philadelphia which you only see in establishing shots, Fugitive At 17 is a decent enough drama about a girl on the run. Marie Avgeropoulos is invading male nerd space as she is both beautiful and a computer hacker, not the image one usually has of hackers. But it's her computer skills that are invaluable to her right now as she seeks to clear herself of a murder charge, the murder of her best friend.She goes with Cindel Chartrand usually to keep an eye on her as she's beautiful and a bit of a wild child. But they split at a club with Avgeropoulos going off with Daniel Rindress-Kaye and Chartrand being picked up by Casper Van Dien. Van Dien slips her a roofie and Chartrand dies of it and he attacks Avgeropoulos when she goes looking for her friend. The cops think she killed her friend.The plot is kind of weak here and a good lawyer would have gotten her off as there was never even a motive hinted at why she would kill her friend. But later on while being transported to jail with some real feminine hard cases she gets caught up in an escape.It's a good news bad news situation. Bad because she's a fugitive, good because she's free to investigate herself. She has a detective played by Christina Cox whom she gradually convinces of her innocence.I liked Avgeropoulos's character. She's got a lot of Nancy Drew in her for the 21st century. Nancy could never have kept up and in touch with law enforcement and her father if she didn't have what this girl has available to her.Casper Van Dien who is usually a square jawed hero reverses type against himself to play a predator. And play it well.Fugitive At 17, not a bad film for a made for Lifetime TV job.

As it stands, it's a 5/10. Slightly better than most of you average afternoon TV-movie fare, but CERTAINLY NOT worth it's current 6.3 IMDb rating. I'll use Brian De Palma's "Passion" as a gauge there, as it's rated 5.3, and it's exemplary in terms of production quality and style compared to something like this. Far better acted and just strides better overall.Right off the bat we see the television/budget shortcomings. Terrible opening sequence with awful, cheap credits, blurry stock, and the whole beginning rushed to-boot, in typical TV-movie fashion.Then the film gains some steam with a promising start from the lead. Casper is also good as the villain here. As bad as the production values are, the film flows quite nicely, and the audience does feel for the lead character and her plight. BUT!The acting still falls flat in many places and there are some serious plausibility issues both procedural and otherwise, and the film just ends and starts a bit TOO much like a TV movie. The middle third isn't bad at all, but don't expect much.48/100 seen much worse. I knew the production values would be questionable but they were worse than I expected. The acting and the flow of the film were better than I expected, but I didn't expect much.I'd pass. Not even worth the $1.32 rental at the redbox.In hind-site, TV movies that are worth watching are rare... super rare.. and most that are worth watching were made by HBO films. Brian's Song, Long Gone(Stogies), Temple Grandin... Duel... there just aren't many GREAT TV movies. Fugitive at 17 isn't terrible, but it did nothing to distance itself from being 'a decent television movie' at the very best. I mean that in the 'this is a basic cable movie, not a 'premium channel' movie' kind of way to boot. Again, pass.

Holly Hamilton (Marie Avgeropoulos) is a precocious Philadelphia high school senior who hacks into computers and commits insurance fraud and various other crimes--but only for the noblest of purposes. When she is framed for the murder of her best friend at a rave--which Holly, of course, only went to because her friend insisted--she must go on the run and prove her innocence to the local cops led by tough but compassionate detective and mom Cameron Langford (Christina Cox).This made-for-TV production is the latest of MTI/Lifetime's "at 17" series, a little (but not much) rougher and grittier than its predecessors, "Stalked at 17" and "Betrayed at 17." Fans of this series should definitely enjoy it. It's professionally filmed with decent acting. Plot-wise, it pretty much follows the old formula, with a few tiny surprises and a classic "Scooby Doo" ending. This script is staid and unimaginative: I like to use memorable lines of dialogue as the titles of my reviews, but the best thing I could find here was the above closed captioned stage direction.Simply entertaining but quite contrived: Although Holly has had her share of bad luck, she also has some rather amazing strokes of fortune. While Avgeropoulos does the best job possible of portraying her, this character is an unbelievable paragon of brilliance and off-center virtue, a veritable Robin Hood who, despite many of fate's turns working against her, has apparently never done one truly wrong or foolish thing in her entire life.Subject matter notwithstanding, FUGITIVE AT 17 is TVland clean: An unexplicit rape attempt, some mild violence, lots of chase scenes, no real gore or nudity, a few "damns" and b-bombs but no f-bombs, etc.Oh, well. I realize that films of this sort have their share of fans, and I hope those people won't take too much exception to my little wise-ass observations here.