How sad is this?

A lot of fun.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

I can't believe anyone who was in or behind this picture can be proud of it. Gabrielle Anwar plays awful in this hunt for her son, which is captured by her make believe nasty husband. He raises the boy in a loving way (although, it seems like it) and turns him into a real world citizen, happy too. In a day or so 15 years are forgotten, the father sees he was wrong and likely ends on an island of 1 square mile to die a dreadful dead. The boy forgets over sudden nearly every day of his happy life with his dad and runs with his mother to LA (I've seen many places in the USA, but would rather live in Kabul than in LA). Is this happy ever after? A very flat movie, with bad digital effects, poor performance and a laughable story. 90 minutes of my life in the trash bin - it's a pity

So the wife leaves her husband because he put her through law school and bought a boat to start a business in the Caribbean. Real hard life. She never makes use of her education, wants a divorce, uses lawyers to take everything, including the kid. All he wants to do is make it work for them. Loves her, loves his family. He wasn't a cheater or a womanizer or an alcoholic or anything like that. He just wants to build a better life for his child. She will have none of it.So the father fakes his and his son's death. He goes on to raise a young man who can speak 4 languages, has seen a lot of the world, is cultured, educated, well mannered, healthy, and wealthy. Not to mention he lives in paradise.Meanwhile, she remarries and has 2 very problematic children. Stepson is going to court, stepdaughter is about to get kicked out of her first week in college. Obviously she's a real champ of a parent.She finds out her son is alive, throws new family in trash can on her way out of the country illegally, and races to find him. She acts like he's a dog or some other pet, although he's already 18 "she wants him". She ruins her x hubby's life by getting the law after him and threatening him with life in prison, although he is genuine and did everything to make the marriage work, as you'll see. It's guaranteed that her son's life will be degraded by moving to Los Angeles, the butthole of the world. Her stepchildren and her new husband have some major adjustments to overcome as well.Dad ends up starving to death on a deserted island... She gets custody of the ... "man" and lives happily ever after.I have so many issues with this I don't even know where to begin. First, anybody who's been at sea since they were 4yo is not going to settle down in L.A. for more than a week. Secondly, the son wouldn't have left the only parent he ever knew for some stranger. Nor would he leave the only life he knew. Even if he did, he would swim back from L.A. after a very short time. Guaranteed.I wont even get in to the ethical implications. Suffice to say that this movie serves as proof of how sick and backwards the inner workings of some feminine minds can be.The immoral of the story... kill the good husband, mind control the good son. Be selfish because you're a woman and everyone else exists to entertain you.This movie is trash & promotes trashy values, brought to you by Lifetime, a trashy network. At best, Lifetime shows you exactly what NOT to do.

***MAJOR SPOILER ALERT*** Having the court rule against him, in his child custody case, Quinn Halloran decides to disappear together with his four year old son Mark into total oblivion. The two end up lost in the teeth of a vicious Pacific Tsunami off the California coast. Kristen the worried mother of Mark gets the terrible news that both her husband Quinn and four year old son Mark have gone under the waves never to be seen or heard from again.It's now some 14 years later when viewing a video tape of her friends vacationing in the Caribbean that Kristen notice something very unusual. On the video tape there's this strapping young boy and his dad operating the boat that Kristen's friends were sailing on. The two sailors were Mark, now 18, and his dad Quinn Halloran!Desperately trying to track down her long lost son, if in fact that's who he is, Kristen goes so far as to risk being arrested by faking a lost passport in order to get on the island, Saint Alicia. It's there that both Mark and Quinn are supposed to be living and working as tourist guides,in operating a sail boat, on.Finally tracking down Mark, who's known on the island as Matthew Williams, and getting him to give her a boat ride, to see the sights of Saint Alicia, Kristine is now more then certain that he's the son she supposedly lost at sea some 14 years ago. It's Matthew's father known affectingly by everyone on Saint Alicia as Captain John who, after Matthew told him about his encounter with Kristen, smells a rat, or barracuda, and starts sweating bullets. It's there and then that Captain John decides to check out and take off for Porto Rico with a now bewildered and confused Matthew!***SPOILER ALERT*** We as well as Kristen soon realize that both Matthew and his sweating and nose twitching, from an obvious nervous condition, dad are the real McCoy: Mark and Quinn Hallaran. This has a now cornered Quinn, or better yet Captain John, make a run for it, with an escape to Porto Rico now out of the question, before the long arm of the law finally catches up with him. Captain John is now, with the cat out of the bag, wanted for a whole slew of crimes that includes kidnapping passport violations and using a false name on his both car and boat licenses.It was at first that Kristen was in trouble of getting thrown in jail and deported for trying illegally to get on the island in order to find her long lost son. But as it soon turned out Captain John in him being either so guilt ridden or just plain whacked out, on bottles of over 100% proof of the islands home made rum, who was now the most wanted man, or woman, on the island if not the entire Caribbean!With the plus 4 category Hurricane Edwardo bearing down on Saint Alcia Captain John and his boy Matthew, who's still in a state of confusion, decide to make a B-line towards Salt Cay that's right straight dab in the path of rampaging hurricane. This has Kristen who had since learned to operate a motor boat, by non other then Matthew, to get to Salt Cay first! It's there in the swirling winds sands and ocean waves that she'll finally confront her good for nothing husband and get back from him what's so, by a unanimous decision of the L.A family court, rightfully hers: Kristen's long lost son Mark, or now Matthew, that Quinn or in his latest incarnation Captain John took away from her!

Chace Crawford, an up and coming young actor, walks off with this movie for TV. He's charming and does a decent acting job with a featured role, his first. Story revolves around a man who takes his son and fakes a boat accident and disappears with the result that he and his son were lost at sea. This leaves the wife, a shrew, behind. She remarries and fifteen years go by when we discover the father and son aren't dead.As expected, the mother learns this and goes on a wild search to find them. This is where the film goes down hill. This woman seems to break every law in entering another country, which is impossible without a passport of which she has none, nor birth certificate. She actually becomes a rather insipid person and you root for the father and son to lose her.Gabrielle Anwar plays the long lost mother badly. Looking to young for the part, they try getting her hair up for the older woman, but then suddenly she's running along the beach with her long hair flowing behind her in the breeze. Her mouth also bothered me. Craig Sheffer does much better as the father and evokes sympathy from his audience as his reasons for the kidnapping make sense. To keep his son from becoming a mommies's boy. Unfortunately the shrew wins out. The farewell scene between the father and son, brought some heartfelt emotions from young Crawford.There is some spectacular scenery of the islands and the sea in this film. Gorgeous photography and the good looking Chace Crawford make it a film worth watching.