Rain pours, thunder claps, and the score shrieks and shudders through almost every minute of No Good Deed. We\u2019re in a suburban cul-de-sac, where dissatisfied mom Terri (Taraji P Henson) has just bid her husband adieu for the weekend. The doorbell rings, and there\u2019s Idris Elba, soaked to the skin, with a cut on his forehead from driving into a tree.<\/p>\n
We know \u2013 but Terri doesn\u2019t \u2013 that he\u2019s Colin Evans, a notorious escaped convict, who has already broken free to throttle one faithless ex-girlfriend to death, and exhibits all the signs of malignant narcissism. Somehow he charms his way inside, even though Henson supposedly used to be a lawyer and says she was a dab hand at homicide cases back in the day. Can\u2019t she spot a delusional psychopath when she sees one?<\/p>\n
Elba and Henson both produced this crazily overwrought stranger-danger B-movie, so they\u2019re getting no free passes here. There\u2019s a modicum of Dead Calm-like sexual friction between them, and when Leslie Bibb pops in for a bit of flirtation and gossip, the movie briefly raises its<\/p>\n
Alas, Colin ruthlessly stomps on any lingering potential this interloper can provide. Elba\u2019s brutish charisma only gets him so far with a script this illogical \u2013 there\u2019s hardly much need for him to string Terri and her two children along as hostages, let alone drive them round to the scene of a former crime where he intends to huff, puff and blow the house down all over again.<\/p>\n
Director Sam Miller, a veteran of Luther, serves up the domestic violence equivalent of a Punch and Judy show. To its already questionable taste and dated morality, it adds a laughably contrived twist and even manages to fold in some bizarre slut-shaming, as if the only way to explain a man like Colin is with the legions of mocking, insatiable and mercifully dead harpies who made him that way.<\/p>\n