Damsels Still In Distress

By James Poniewozik

Whether you believe that the phrase "true-life TV movie" is an absurdity depends on how you define "true" and "life." These quickie pics are often based on disputed facts, made without knowledge of crucial events and tarted up with invented scenes. But between the lines, they do capture the epic, true-life struggle of programmers to be the first to get these stories on air, access or no access, facts or no facts.

Anyone half familiar with the capture and rescue of Private First Class Jessica Lynch in Iraq or the kidnapping and rescue of Elizabeth Smart, for instance, will not learn much from the dueling movies on NBC and CBS (both Nov. 9, 9 p.m. E.T.). For Saving Jessica Lynch, NBC couldn't get the co-operation of the 20-year-old private, but that didn't stop it any more than France's balking stopped Donald Rumsfeld. Lynch (Laura Regan) ends up less a character than a prop. We learn little about her captivity, and she has scant dialogue or characterization; Regan's main technique is to open her eyes lemurishly wide to convey fear, soulfulness and joy alike. The real lead--because he did cooperate with NBC--is Mohammed al-Rehaief (Nicholas Guilak), the lawyer who tipped off the Army that Lynch was being held at a Nasiriyah hospital. He's the One Good Iraqi amid a citizenry depicted as either resentful of the Americans or cowed by Saddam's sneering, strutting fedayeen.

Saving finesses the controversial details of the rescue, embellished in early accounts. Lynch doesn't empty her rifle when her unit is captured (but the ambush scene is chaotic enough that you might believe she did), nor are the soldiers who rescue her met by Iraqi troops (but the movie tries to gin up suspense anyway). Sigh. It would have been a far less dull picture had the meddling truth not got in the way.

In making The Elizabeth Smart Story, on the other hand, CBS worked closely with the family of the Utah girl abducted for nine months, allegedly by a religious fanatic and drifter who calls himself Emmanuel. The movie follows Ed and Lois Smart as they butt heads with the police, who are portrayed as wrongheaded and arrogant. They cast suspicion on Ed, and slough off the parents' pleas to look for Emmanuel, the family's former handyman. Dylan Baker, who played a suburban dad pedophile in the darkly comic movie Happiness, is the ideal choice for Ed--he radiates piety or creepiness depending on who looks at him. But while we get glimpses of Elizabeth's captivity--Emmanuel takes her as his second "wife," dressing her like a children's-picture-Bible idea of a prophet's spouse--there remain more questions than answers about what happened to her and how she stayed hidden in plain sight so long.

Elizabeth Smart has a most unlikely hero: a star from a rival network, namely, John Walsh (Bruce Gooch), whose America's Most Wanted was instrumental in Emmanuel's capture. The winner of the CBS-NBC battle of the quickies, it turns out, is Fox. Two hours of prime-time advertising, and it didn't pay a cent. --By James Poniewozik