Plot Summary: Crime Novelist Grace Miller involves herself in the investigation of her sister's murder against Detective Ed's wishes.
There was a time when famous novelist Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the fictional Detective Sherlock Holmes, was asked to solve real murders.
Following that, many movies, TV shows and books began writing characters who were somehow recruited to help detectives solve cases. Remember the TV show Castle?
Anyway, here comes yet another Movie where a bestselling author who writes crime fiction, manages to help solve her sister's murder.
Now here's a quick review: the movie is unfortunately, terribly boring. I do like Alyssa Milano which is why I decided to watch this movie in the first place. To my disappointment, the actress clearly doesn't bring her A-game to the movie. And her chemistry with the actor playing the Detective was very lukewarm. In some scenes it appeared she had to push herself to kiss him. That's how reluctant the actors look while filming scenes together.
The only actors who actually act in this movie are the students in Kathleen's (Grace's sister) class and Emilie Ullerup who plays Kathleen. The rest appear to have been coerced into playing their roles.
BRAZEN Movie Plot
The movie opens with Grace at a book reading that ends with applause from her audience. The book's name is Brazen Virtue, the actual book by Nora Roberts on which this movie is based.
Grace then heads to her sister Kathleen's house when she receives a message. Unbeknownst to her, Kathleen is not only an English Teacher, but also moonlights as a dominatrix.
On the other side of town, a man is filling coffee from a machine in one cup and hot water in another. As he goes to pay, there's a holdup and the man quickly disarms the robber. Another man enters the market. He's Detective Ben and he offers to pay for his coffee because his partner Detective Ed rarely pays for it. The grocer makes no attempt to offer free coffee considering the detectives saved the business.
Back to Kathleen who has invited her sister because she wants her to be there when she goes after her ex husband to fight for custody for her son Kevin.
But then she is reluctant and almost doesn't let Grace enter the house. Grace pretty much pushes her way into the house and remarks how old the old house is.
Kathleen and Grace get into a little tiff about Grace's choice of work. Later, Kathleen is weeping in her room and Grace comes over, makes a face and then gets into her sister's bed and hogs the covers. But she does do her sisterly duty of consoling her sister.
The next day, Kathleen is off to work while Grace starts work on another novel. But she is disturbed by the sounds of tools.
Her next door neighbour is none other than Detective Ed. Grace takes one look at him and decides her writing can wait. She heads over and gets herself invited into his backyard. And oh look, she even got fresh coffee in a mug! Ed declines the hot beverage because he doesn't care much for caffeine. Only herbal teas for him, please.
Grace introduces herself and Ed excuses himself to go inside the house and get a hardcover book of Grace's latest novel. He tells her he has read all of her books. But clearly she doesn't look like her photos because he didn't recognize her when he saw her in person. Great Detective skills. Grace immediately wants to give her autograph even though he didn't ask for it. Luckily he doesn't have a pen.
Soon enough Grace also gets him to ask her on a date.
At school, Kathleen is trying to get one of his students, Rand, to do his schoolwork. He reacts by pushing his headphones into his ears. Another student, Jerald, tries to get her attention too but Grace picks that time to call her and ask to borrow her blouse. She also brags about bagging a date with the Detective she just googled. Kathleen is proud of her sister for her determination to not stay single for even a day since she arrived here.
As Kathleen walks away, Billy, the janitor, eyes her menacingly.
While Grace is setting up scenarios for the Detective to solve, Kathleen readies herself as an alter ego Desiree.
Ed then takes Grace to his home to show off how he's rebuilding his house by sawing off boards and covering everything with plastic. He asks her advice on getting a kitchen island for the kitchen even though it is clearly too small. Grace assists by pretending they are working together in the kitchen with a kitchen island present. It is confirmed they cannot get one because they will have to squeeze through to get anything. Ed finds his chance to seduce Grace and they kiss, even though it looks like they are both reluctant.
Ed then sees off Grace and she slowly climbs the stairs and immediately starts yelling about her amazing date to the empty walls.
She finally makes it upstairs and finds Kathleen laying on the floor. Grace realizes she's dead and immediately runs outside to cry and scream. Ed, who is outside fixing a bulb, rushes over and checks the body. He confirms she is dead.
Grace is devastated while Ed, who was taking a week off, insists on being on the case as he was the first one present at the crime scene. Ben isn't too thrilled to be put on the case.
Grace is allowed back in the house to pick up her things and while Ed is busy, goes to snoop around the house. She requests to be told developments of the case but Ed doesn't make any promises, so she decides to conduct an investigation on her own.
She goes to school to pick up her sister's things and meets the students who offer her condolences. Rand comments how he appreciated Kathleen even though she was hard on him. As she is leaving, Jerald, who is also the senator's son, remarks how Billy the janitor had an argument with Kathleen and stated he knew about her. Grace tells Jerald to not be a gossip queen but then uses his information to confront Billy who tells her that he did know Kathleen was Desiree.
Ed and Ben go to Fantasy Inc, the place where Kathleen worked and get her videos to study.
Meanwhile, another dominatrix is killed and posed in the same manner as Kathleen was: as if she is crucified.
Ed and Ben are stumped and can't come up with any leads. They interview the client who was watching and he too didn't see anything and didn't even know if it was part of the act or not.
Grace is preparing for the funeral and Jonathan, Kathleen's ex, shows up and tells her he knew what her sister was up to. His hooker remark earns him a punch on the mouth. She warns him not to come but he says he's the grieving husband.
At the funeral, Grace gives an eulogy that makes Jerald cry. He stays behind to stare at Kathleen who is in the casket. He tells Grace he's the one who sent the flowers because lillies signify a return to innocence after death. The senator comes along and isn't too please Jerald is hanging about older ladies. Grace gives him a good review and sends him away.
She later gets on with Jonathan again and then goes to the detectives to complain about how the ex husband knew what Kathleen was up to. The detectives snub her and walk away.
But Grace is now motivated more than ever to get to the bottom of the mystery. She moves back into the house after forensics gave the all-clear. She finds a condolence card in the mail that is addressed to Desiree.
Grace marches to the precinct and meets with the captain. She shows her the card and then asks to be put on the case as she could very much be the next Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The Captain doesn't think so and Grace pries into the computer and sees crime scene photos. She notices that Kathleen's body was positioned carelessly while great care was taken to position the second victim's body so it looked like the first one, an obvious attempt to misdirect.
The Captain gets so impressed that Grace deduced the same thing Ed did that she puts her in the case, all access.
Grace gloats that she's a genius Detective. She's allowed to go to every interview and act all bossy. They go meet Rand who apparently sent the note. Except it wasn't or his father.
In the meantime there's another murder attempt at another Fantasy Inc worker. She looks like she works out and manages to kick her intruder and slice his wrist with a knife. The intruder bares his wrist just enough so Bethany can notice his watch. He then knocks her out.
The detectives are called again and Bethany hesitates to talk. Grace sits down, says she's brave and Bethany immediately opens up to her. Is it a woman thing? Did Bethany actually believe Grace got her?
She mentions the watch and how expensive it looked. Footprints are found and they match the same from the previous crime scenes: size 11.
As soon as they hear about the watch, they nod to each other that, oh...now we know who did it.
They immediately head to see Rand, find the gold watch and his size 11 shoes. They arrest him even though he claims he didn't do it.
Grace is also not convinced Rand did it but makes amends with Ed and offers him herbal teabags.
And then they spend the night together. Eventually it becomes known that Rand had a solid alibi on the night of the murder. He was with his boyfriend and kept quiet because he hadn't told his father about his sexual preferences.
BRAZEN Ending Explained with Spoilers!
Grace decides to take extreme measures to draw out the killer. She goes to Fantasy Inc. and tells them wants to be the new Desiree because there's a huge demand for her.
She then goes to announce her brilliant idea to dress up as a dominatrix to the police. Ed is pissed! He walks away in a huff not pleased to have his somewhat girlfriend try to seduce strangers online.
Grace gets into her suit and begins her show. There's no response yet.
At school, Rand has been released and Jerald comes to provoke him. He then beats up Rand saying Kathleen was his.
Uh oh...it was Jerald all along. It was obvious considering the lovey-dovey looks he always gave Kathleen or the way he was staring down at her at the funeral. No shocking twists here.
Grace is disappointed when she doesn't get to perform her second show after Rand gives his statement to the police. Everyone is looking for Jerald while the Captain tells Grace that she is never going to be the kind of author anyone is going to hire as a consultant.
Grace is disappointed.
While the police are searching for Jerald who is not at home waiting to be arrested.
He's at Grace's house. Jerald has some weird obsession with women he sees as mother figures because he didn't get any affection from his own mother. But once he saw Kathleen fall from grace by performing lewd acts on camera, he decided to kill her and return her to innocence. Hence the crucified position was used for his victims.
Grace pieces this together too and then gets into a scuffle with him. Jerald also had a plan to go back home and push his mother off the stairs so she dies and he would pretend to be the grieving son. This plan makes no sense. Or perhaps he didn't think that Rand survived the altercation and would then talk to police. Nope. Rand was just going to lay there and keep mum with absolutely no threat from Jerald.
Eventually Jerald is shot by Ed and Grace is saved.
In the end, Grace is sitting on Ed's lap and they discuss their relationship. Then a deep breath is taken and the actors force themselves to kiss the other. Cringe.
The movie is dull, and Grace's character doesn't seem like someone you would want to sympathise with. The main characters have a fizzling chemistry and the mystery was simply not up to the mark. The suspense could have been built better but unfortunately the execution was poor.
Scare Scale: 1/5
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