So much average

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

There's nothing about this film that is even remotely believable. Grey, overcast skies, oh, I recognize that place, it's Vancouver, Canada - home of the worst movies in the world! And this is yet another piece of garbage from there. Some guy named Harvey Kahn makes these terrible films. Here is an excerpt of something he said during the making of this film >>In the 1967 classic The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman's title character gets some succinct career advice from a friend's father: "Plastics!" Vancouver-based producer Harvey Kahn, here to shoot Murder on Spec, had a similar experience in the 1970s. "I had a guy come up and put his arm around me and he said, 'Cable!'"<< Yeah, well that guy that put his arm around Mr. Kahn must have seen some of his earlier work because this garbage ain't gonna ever be seen anywhere BUT cable so he was sure right about that!

We watched it - it was a passable time-waster built around a very charming leading lady, Brooke Burns (film a.k.a. 'Trophy Wife').She won't challenge Meryl Streep for acting honors, but this was a low-budget vehicle built around the familiar device of a pretty, but determined, main character under attack by a sinister guy (a hacker, an extortionist, a serial killer, a combo - you choose). She will have to resolve to defeat him herself - there's no 'buddy' waiting to bail her out. In this case, the bad guy extorts money from women who have lost rich, but unpleasant, husbands in 'untimely deaths' - deaths he caused, 'on spec' - that is, on 'speculation' that the women will gladly pay a commission to be rid of the villainous 'ex'. It's not an entirely new idea - Alfred Hitchcock used a similar twist in his old TV mystery show.The difference here is that the villain claims to be able to implicate poor Brooke in the murder-for-hire. That part is stretchy. Nonetheless, the camera work is nifty (reminding me of a Director using tribute-type camera angles to echo the genre), and the gadgetry makes for interesting - if implausible - entertainment.It took me a while to realize that the 'killer' had his victims 'over a barrel' - they paid, instead of going to the Police. No wonder they don't want to talk to Brooke when she starts investigating these cases herself: these 'victims' are complicit in a crime. It's an intriguing kind of 'con' - you can't go to the Police with your story, after you pay. hmmmmmmmmmmmm.While the computer and technical abilities of the perpetrator are strictly sci-fi, we saw a similar device used in a big-budget British mini-series with John Hannah entitled 'Amnesia'. The bad guy's ability to produce phony tech data was essential to moving the plot forward, and building the suspense to a surprising climax. The device isn't as well orchestrated in 'Trophy Wife', but it serves the same purpose: it keeps our hero fighting to get her story believed.Finally: life has a way of imitating art.. as silly as the plot might seem, there are fraud, and murder-for-profit cases in the true-life crime annals that seem stranger than anything we've read in fiction.So, I gave the film a 7 - for the 'heroine-battles-super-bad-guy-B-movie-suspense' genre.

The basic premise is interesting. A convoluted frame up where the killer seems to have thought of everything. There's a pointless unused side plot where all closed circuit cameras in the world are at his disposal. This is never used for any purpose but to annoy the heroine. Then there are completely unbelievable scenes of the victims not trying to fight back or even call for help while the bad guy incongruously tells them his weak motivation. But then in the second half she easily traces where the villain lives, picking the lock, and calls 911. Their slow response gives us one last shootout, but so what. I was hoping for perhaps some reasonable answer, like the bad guy had gotten help from someone she blabbed to, but no. There was absolutely no resolution whatever, the only suspect did it and she just knew where to find him. I love the actress. She's now got a decent part in a new TV show "Miss Guided", and looks better in dark hair and deep necklines.

It was pretty good. It was on Lifetime Network but shown under the title " Trophy Wife ". Brook Burns was very good. The killer and his methods were very believable and it made me keep watching to see how she was going to get the guy before he got her. She went to the police repeatedly to tell them about the person who killed her rich husband but they did not believe her, and the police were believable in how they did not believe her. The killer then planted evidence to point the finger at the Trophy Wife and she had to go on the run before she was arrested for the murder she did not commit. It was definitely worth the time watching.