User reviews

This is a TV movie I saw just today.

The story premise is nothing new. An innocent bystander sees a murder or other crime being committed. They are also seen by the "bad guys," but they escape and go to the cops. Then to protect themselves before they testify for the Feds, to protect themselves and their family, they go into the Witness Protection Program.

The acting of the leading adults in the film was fairly good, especially the family's mother. The rest of the family also did credible jobs. The acting and casting of the "bad guys" was pretty typical, but nothing to write home about. Overall however, the film rolled along for two hours fairly quickly, and did not have many real slow spots, which helped me with its rating.

It's not an "edge of your seat movie," by any means, but for a TV movie using fairly unknown actors, it wasn't bad. I have seen much worse movies that were made for the big screen and had "big name" casts and much higher budgets.

A single woman and her two children become a "Family in Hiding" in this 2006 film, done in Canada. Brenda Strong of "Desperate Housewives" fame plays the mother, Carol Peterson. After witnessing a murder, the entire family is put into the Witness Protection Program until Carol can testify. All I've got to say is, if you ever witness a high profile murder, run the other way. The Witness Protection Program is run by the Marx Brothers and is strictly from hunger, at least in this film. The family relocates and gets to live in a dump with no security and is given barely enough money to live on. The people in charge haven't created a job history for Carol, so she can't supplement the money they've given her.

The best part is that one of the thugs after the family infiltrates the Protection office and, after hitting a few buttons on the boss' computer, finds out where the Petersons are living. Now, don't you think they'd be a little more careful than that? Anyone ever heard of your computer being frozen when you're away from your desk? Or getting into your computer via a password? Or how about putting fake info on the computer and putting the real location, using a code, in a wall safe? MORONS. To protect and serve - forget about it. Carol figures out there's a leak immediately, and when she tells the man in charge of her relocation about it, he continues to give the new person in his office all kinds of information so he can call it in to the defendant.

Only a good cast can save this movie, and it does, even if the film isn't terribly exciting. Strong, a likable actress, and the rest of the cast are very good, and you really can believe they're a family. The end of the movie has a chiron that tells how many people the Witness Protection Program has relocated and that they have an 89% conviction rate as a result. With the way they are depicted in "Family in Hiding," this is bound to bring gasps of disbelief from the audience.

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) raids a warehouse near Alhambra (this is in the Los Angeles, CA area), looking for a big narcotics dealer. After about ten minutes, wealthy and attractive divorcée Brenda Strong (as Carol Peterson) witnesses a related murder in her office's underground parking structure. She is able to identify the killer from FBI mug shots. He is on the loose and looking to silence Ms. Strong, so she and her children are placed in the Federal Witness Protection Program. This puts a strain on mature teenagers Elyse Levesque (as Alicia Peterson) and Brett Dier (as Matthew "Matt" Peterson). She is going to miss boyfriend Christopher Jacot (as Brian Jackson) and he won't be able to play basketball...

You know there are going to be problems when the Federal Witness Protection Program people give Strong a funny wig to wear whenever she leaves the house. Watching her run for the wig when someone visits the family is fun. Nobody expects criminals hunting the family might actually look in the windows and/or enter the home, because Strong does not wear the wig inside. The three main stars are cast very well and look like a family – however, the wig makes Strong look like she's wearing a wig to draw attention to herself. Bag guy Hrothgar Mathews (as Roger Nahanee) and his pals use basketball and the boyfriend to track he family, but they need only look for the woman in the obvious wig.

**** Family in Hiding (8/6/06) Timothy Bond ~ Brenda Strong, Elyse Levesque, Brett Dier, Hrothgar Mathews

A single mom witnesses a murder and the baddies are out to stop her testifying, so it's into the Witness Protection Program for the woman and her two kids. From that point the movie does its best to suggest how awful it is to be part of the program and how inefficient the people running it are. The funny thing is, at the end of the movie, out of the blue, it makes a statement about how effective the program is in keeping people safe and obtaining convictions. Which is it guys? You can't have it both ways.

Anyway, I digress.... There are certain things we have come to expect from made-for-TV movies: a clichéd plot, mediocre acting, corny dialogue, cardboard characters. This movie does not disappoint on any of those points. Let's face it, you've seen this sort of thing before, done much better. In fact, you could have written this script yourself. It doesn't offer anything new or anything special. Sometimes you might even have a chortle, although that definitely wasn't the producers intention. The best thing I can say about this movie is that it's not terrible. It's average.

A woman witnesses the murder of a prosecutor by a criminal he is trying to convict. She informs the FBI, who then places her and her family in Witness Protection. And their lives are turned upside down. The agent tries to get the criminal but it seems he has someone in the FBI helping him. And when her daughter calls her boyfriend, it places her family in danger.

The script, storyline is done 100 times before. Acting not good either but not the worst i have seen. It was one of the most boring movies I have seen and I have seen a lot of movies. This goes in my bottom 100 movies I have seen. I had to fast forward to get through.

I was shocked to come and find this movie rated a 5. I've seen better movies scored lower. These reviews are seriously reaching. This movie of course is mediocre - I mean what can you expect? But the acting is just horrible, the plot is annoying, and I was hoping they would kill the daughters character off. I give it a solid 3.

Brenda Strong does it again - makes what would otherwise be a rather standard film something highly interesting and watchable. The unsung star of "Desperate Housewives" gets plenty of screen time here as she stars in "Family in Hiding", which is literally about a family in hiding.

Strong plays Carol Peterson, hard-working solo mother who witnesses the murder of a state attorney, and as the murderer and his gang uncover who she is, the FBI place her and her children into the Witness Protection Program. There, the lives of Carol and her children Matt and Alicia are turned upside down as they try to adjust to their new life while the murderer tracks them down.

Strong is, of course, fantastic, and the acting of pretty much everyone else in the film makes it a TV movie of considerably high standards. Brett Dier plays Matt, and I predict that he will go on to have a very prosperous acting career. Elyse Levesque does an admirable job playing Alicia. Christopher Jacot has a small role as Alicia's boyfriend Brian, and Gary Hetherington gives a good performance as the Peterson's handler in the program, Pritchard.

The Peterson family goes through all the emotions and possible scenarios of what one expects someone to go through if they have just bee uprooted from their lives and placed in a new city with new identities while a murderer hunts them down. This is one suspenseful drama with very little wrong with it, other than it is a bit slow in a couple of areas, and at times the production values are a bit low. Other than those minor issues, it is well worth a watch, especially for fans of Brenda Strong.

About: A mother runs to the government to wipe her backside after getting involved with a criminal.

Story: good story but the lack of specific action was dumb.

Production: Boarderline. A lot things worked while other things like story were very questionable

Highlight: mom in her pj's. And her daut in leggings.

Main Intelligence: 0

Unworthiness Level: 0

Worthless Mutt: 1 mutt and it was eating trash.

Should you watch this? Yes. If you are an intelligent person you may notice that the criminals could hack payphones to find the whereabouts of the family but the government couldn't find the criminals. It's a head scratcher. Like back in 2011 with that cave dweller.

The criminals out of nowhere had a plant working for the government. The plant was making calls from work mind you and was still able to deceive his government pals. I'm Pretty sure their phone calls are monitored.

While the criminals were able to track the family in over 3 snakes. I mean states.

This movie had some stupid elements.

However the eye candy made it worthwhile.

Carol Peterson's husband left her 14 years ago, though he got her pregnant when she was 19. With two kids to support, she had to learn to make it on her own, and she has been office manager at a Los Angeles insurance company for nine years. The price she has had to pay is being too busy to spend time with her family. Matt, for example, wins the big basketball game, but she arrives too late to see it happen. Alicia, who will soon turn 18, is too serious about Brian, in her mother's opinion. Of course, Carol is concerned that her daughter will end up like she did.

Carol witnesses the murder of U.S. Attorney Kanagawa by a major drug dealer, Roger Nahanee. Roger and his goons see her license plate, and he seems to have Chloe Sullivan working for him, so Carol and her family are not hard to find. Fortunately, the FBI get Carol and her family out of danger, at least temporarily. They go into the Witness Protection Program and have to change everything about themselves. Naturally, the kids don't like the idea of leaving their friends. Matt can't stand giving up basketball (what high school teams are still playing in April and May?), and Alicia misses Brian terribly.

First, the family ends up in Seattle, where they live in a house the kids consider a dump, though a lot of us live in places like that. I suppose when you've had the best of everything, it's hard to adjust, though surely these kids remember when their family struggled. I had a different image of the Witness Protection Program; Carol (Barbara?) can't even get a good job because she is hiding information about herself.

Mistakes are made. Not just by Matt/Bob and Alicia/Jennifer, who use poor judgment, but also by the FBI. Someone there is on Roger's payroll. So the family must move again, and again. Each time, they conveniently end up near the Canadian border. A look at the closing credits will explain why.

There is occasional excitement, and the final scenes are very exciting indeed.

I have to say the head villain, for all his smarts, uses extraordinarily bad judgment in one scene. Though that scene does manage to add some excitement.

This is nothing spectacular, but it is entertaining. There are funny moments, especially in the scenes where the family members must come up with new identities. There are tender moments such as Alicia's 18th birthday where the family finally gets to be a family, something they have neglected to do with their busy lives.

Brenda Strong is quite good, though I wish I had known it was her. I'm used to only hearing her, and she didn't give that over-the-top performance I'm used to. Elyse Levesque makes a very good whiny teenager. Not annoying at all. Just entertaining. And when given a challenge, she meets it. I wish I could say the same for Brett Dier. He is okay most of the time, but in one challenging scene, he's just annoying.

Jerry Wasserman does a good job as Agent Cloninger, who is in charge of the family's safety and care. Cloninger could have done a better job, but maybe it's not his fault. I guess he has to follow procedure, and procedure seems woefully inadequate.

I didn't catch the name of the most entertaining villain, but since someone said he sounded Russian, I'm going to say Raoul Ganeev. He's very good. A bumbling idiot at times, but also quite scary.

It's as good as your typical TV-movie.