Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

Blistering performances.

It's an enjoyably tense television movie. Written by Frderick Forsythe, it has little action in it but a good deal of suspense. Forsythe has the peculiar characteristic of being able to invest small details with interest, especially technical details and complicated identity scams. This, being a TV movie, is going to lack much in the way of that talent and concentrates instead on simple intrigues and mysteries, some of which are left unexplained. People come and go, lying to and cheating one another, but it's not high drama and it's not witty.The MacGuffin here is some formula for a super antibiotic, as if we didn't have enough antibiotics. It winds up by accident in Rod Taylor's hands and the head honcho of the biggest, most villainous corporation you ever heard of wants it back. That accident, by the way, involves a light airplane crashing directly into Taylor's cottage on the Kerry coast and killing his wife and two children. It's made clear at the opening that Taylor is an ex Green Beret but that plays little part in the narrative until the ridiculous ending.It may be one of Taylor's best performances, TV movie or not. He's aged, like a good wine. No longer the confident, tanned young hero of "The Birds", he's now a little puffy and from some angles looks uncannily like Robin Williams. By the time of "Welcome to Woop Woop," he was a goggle-eyed caricature of his former handsome self but it didn't bother him and it was a viewer's delight.Joanna Petit has held up well. In fact -- pretty well indeed. Her role, though, is a stereotype, the ambitious female reporter. Didn't Dirty Harry get saddled with one of them somewhere along the line of sequels? The script is functional but lacks poetry. The location shooting in Ireland is just fine and County Kerry is just as I remember it -- rainy, with "sun breaks." At the climax, the film implodes. Characters change their personalities for reasons of the utmost stupidity. Here's the grim villain who does the wet work, combing the grassy wind-swept hills, looking to kill Taylor who is hiding somewhere among the brush. This dedicated assassin has always been a cool customer, dressed in black, silent, full of self control. But now he must cold cock one of his partners in a fit of pique, which is stupid. Then, unable to determine Taylor's hiding place in the grassy hills and the furze bushes, he whirls around wildly, firing his pistol in all directions until he's out of ammunition. He runs until he's exhausted. Taylor corners him and the villain drops to his knees, sobbing and begging for mercy. Right.There is one gem of a performance in the movie. Cyril Cusack's police detective. The role, like that of the reporter, the head honcho and his goons, is a cliché. Cusack shows up once in a while to politely inform Taylor to keep his nose out of police business, forget about revenge, and let the cops do their jobs. But Cusack turns his appearances into something that brightens the whole show. He was equally good in another Forsythe story, "The Day of the Jackal." Not the revolting remake, but the original.

So I'm watching the sabotaged plane go down in the Irish countryside, making a direct hit on a farmhouse where the Donegin family is on holiday, and I have to think to myself - how incredible are the odds of something like that happening? For starters, the plane was supposed to blow up in mid-air if I'm not mistaken, and secondly, on any other given day, the Donegin's wouldn't have been in the house to get wiped out like that. Talk about bad luck, but Steve Donegin's (Rod Taylor) was a gazillion to one shot.I have to second another reviewer for this film, the dialog in it was pretty bad, and in my case it was for over half the picture. Going in I had to rely on a brief synopsis on the DVD sleeve, and coming out I had to read the other reviews here. The main point of the picture being a revenge flick I pretty much figured out on my own, but then there was some other business about a revolutionary new antibiotic and an international enterprise corporation called Intent, which stood for International Enterprise. You can see I'm trying to come up with stuff for this review.So if Rod Taylor's character was a former Green Beret and Viet Nam vet we have to believe the math works for his character who looked every bit of fifty years old that Taylor was at the time. Not buying it. As the investigative reporter looking into the circumstances of the plane crash and industrial sabotage, actress Joanne Pettet's character is written like she might be falling for Donegin. Not buying that one either. The only thing I did buy was this film as part of a two hundred fifty Mystery Movie pack from Mill Creek Entertainment at a cheap enough price that makes the occasional clunker bearable.

Director Michael O'Herlihy took a fascinating novel by famed novelist Fredrick Forsyth and combined them with the super talents of Rod Taylor and created yet another suspenseful thriller. The movie is called " Cry of the Innocent. " The story centers around an American, by the name of Steve Donegin (Rod Taylor) who works for an Insurance company stationed in Ireland. In what seemed like a typical aircraft accident a plane explodes and crashed into a countryside farmhouse, killing Donegin's family. Accepting the incident as an accident, Donegin learns that the crash was caused by a bomb. What the culprits do not know is that the family they killed, belonged to an Ex-Green Beret and they have filled him with deep revenge. The movie begins slowly, but like the novel ends up with great intrigue and exciting drama. With the likes of Rod Taylor, this movie is sure to please his many fans. Excellent movie fare which includes the talents of Cyril Cusack, Nigel Davenport and Alexander Knox. ****

I've liked Rod Taylor ever since I saw him in Hitchcock's "The Birds" (arguably his most famous role ever) - a sort of "everyman" version of the classic leading men of Hitchcock like Cary Grant. But he must have been going through a dry spell in his career when he agreed to make this little time-waster. Shot in a totally flat style that screams TV-movie, "Cry Of The Innocent" is mostly dull, when it's not unintentionally funny (check out that editing trick near the end to convince us of Taylor's "camouflage" skills!). Taylor himself walks through the film, and Joanna Pettet is not around long enough to help much. Another problem is the very poor sound recording - at least a third of the dialogue is hard to hear. About the only interesting point of the film is that it reflects the post-Vietnam era disillusionment of Americans (though it was shot in Ireland) towards big international corporations. * out of 4.