It was vastly underrated singer/songwriter John Hiatt who once observed: “I’m just so easily led when the little head does the thinking.” Lordy, ain’t that the truth?
Peter Bundle (Don Cummings) should have paid heed to those words of wisdom. Instead, when the former pro golfer with a murky past turned security alarm salesman keeps a fateful appointment with a sultry and lonely bored housewife (Colleen Corrigan), he lets that little head overrule the voices screaming out red alerts in his big head. The woman relates a sob story to Bundle about her cruel and controlling husband and how she’s desperate for cash to get away from him. Then she screws his brains out and faster than you can say “buried in the rough,” he’s hooked. He’s also in big trouble when he involuntarily finds himself, shortly afterwards, riding next to a couple of slabs of human beef, en route to an unplanned meeting with a silky smooth master criminal (Alan Wasserman). There he discovers that the evil villain knows the tiniest details of his sordid past, which he threatens to reveal to Bundle’s current employer unless the latter procures two master alarm codes to a couple of expensive homes the bad guys would like to knock off.
Reluctant and resentful that his past has caught up with him,
Bundle, eventually recognizes a way to help his newfound paramour and agrees to the scheme. There goes that little head again… This is, quite frankly, one of the most unoriginal films I’ve seen in quite awhile. Filled with a collection of cut-out caricatures (including a cultured, charm-oozing bad guy who must’ve been left over from a James Bond casting session), “The Appointment” telegraphs where it’s going from the moment Bundle arrives on the femme fatale’s doorstep. From there it refuses to allow anything remotely approaching an unexpected plot turn to get in the way.
Only solid performances and fine photography provide a small measure of tension and entertainment in this totally derivative, by-the-numbers would-be thriller. Here’s hoping that director Todd Wake racks his big head a little harder next time and comes up with something a little more original.
