The spin of this dramatisation of a real life crime story, a case I'd never heard of but one which apparently rivetted New Zealand as it played out in court in 2013, is that a selfless Erin Brockovich-style crusader, Lee-Anne Cartier, overcame family problems, financial troubles and disinterested police to expose her brother's wife as his killer, but given the perfectly plain fact that the wife, Helen Milner, is a murderous weirdo who compulsively - and stupidly - lies (and not just about the details of her husband's death) and given she was at the time being investigated about other crimes including a $30,000 theft, was considered a loon by work colleagues and was seeking to claim $250,000 from her victim's life insurance policy, it is hard to believe Cartier's efforts beyond her initial questioning of a suicide ruling were necessary, which might just be a problem in the telling of the story, but either way, rightly or wrongly, this $2 million production is a dry affair and feels like an attempt to present slow-moving and routine NZ police matters as something more 'Hollywood'.
★☆☆☆☆
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