No Good Deed Review

"No good deed goes unpunished." Think about that statement. What does that mean? Like, really. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Is that saying that every time you do something good for someone else, you are going to get punished? That's not what my parents told me when I was growing up. They told me that if I do a good deed, I will get rewarded, not punished. But in this scenario, is it referring to the fact that if you do a good deed by letting a killer into your home then you will get punished? I can kinda see that. Although I don't know if I would call letting a killer into your home a good deed. That's more like a dumb deed. The phrase would make a lot more sense if it said that no bad deed goes unpunished. That would actually make more sense for this movie because it could refer to this killer and how his terrible deeds won't go unpunished. But alas, it is what it is. We have a movie called No Good Deed. And even though the title makes no sense, the movie itself is actually pretty entertaining.

No Good Deed is your typical home-invasion thriller. A man escapes from prison after having murdered several people. In the pouring rain, he goes up to this woman's house and gets himself inside. The rest of the movie is about the interactions between the two and it kinda makes you nervous because she takes a long time to figure things out and you are wondering when he is going to snap. Being perfectly honest, I'll fully admit that the writing in this movie is pretty bad. First off, how this guy escapes is really easy. Then him sneaking around town is way too easy. Then we have the world's dumbest lady who just lets him in and falls for all his tricks. Despite her claiming that she has worked a lot with homicide cases in her job, it is surprising clueless she is. When she does figure it out, her reaction is really stupid. She breaks all the rules of what not to do when you realize there is a killer in your home. I'm not going to spoil the second half of the movie, but this poor writing continues for the whole movie.

With that in mind, is this movie a complete and utter waste? No. You'll remember that I started this off by saying this movie was entertaining. And it was. How did it pull it off? First off, you have to realize what genre this is. It's a thriller. The point of it is to provide thrills. And that's exactly what this did. Yes, the writing is bad, but Idris Elba plays our psychopath killer and he does a dang job. In fact he, does such a good job that, for the most part, I was able to overlook all of the bad writing. Early in the movie, they officially accused him of being a malignant narcissist. But really there was a lot of issues that this character had. Despite all these issues, he's a really smart man. He's a good liar. He's great at acting being chill and relaxed when he needs to. He has an end goal in mind and he does a good job of doing exactly what he needs to do in order to get there. And Idris Elba pulls all this off perfectly and thus makes this a fairly intense movie. You figure out his end goal towards the end of the movie, but for most of the movie, you have no idea. Thus you feel that at any moment he is going to snap and start going on this murderous rampage. The phrase "on the edge of my seat" actually applied in this because I was definitely not relaxed. And during the final half of the movie, there were times where I actually jumped pretty good.

No, this movie isn't perfect. As the year goes, there will be several more thrillers and crime dramas that will be released and I'm sure that a lot of them will be better than this is. The writing isn't great. There are a lot of unrealistic scenes. The movie was full of several cliches. Because of all this, the movie was panned by a lot of critics. I can totally see where these people are coming from. After reading this, if you tell me that you hated the movie, I will understand completely. I even went in with low expectations and was ready to pan it along with everyone else. However, when push comes to shove, the big thing you have to remember is that this movie is a thriller. Being a thriller, it did a great job at what it was trying to do. I personally experienced a lot of thrills. Thus I have to give the movie kudos. Idris Elba did a fantastic job in this movie as he single-handedly made this movie intense and worth the time. Because of this, I was able to overlook a lot of the flaws of the movie and enjoy my experience. My grade for No Good Deed is a 7/10.