A fabulous group of actresses join together in this TV movie that takes a serious subject and does its best to create a convincing story of Retribution over five women, all survivors of a Nazi concentration camp, involved in the murder of the doctor who experimented on them. Only one of them is apparently responsible for the murder, and they create a secret plan to exonerate a man who has been accused of the murder. The women are Barbara Barry, Jessica Walter, Sandy Dennis, Loretta Swit and Valerie Harper. They all have different ideals of how they should deal with the discovery that this man (Rip Torn) is living among them and running a restaurant in their upscale San Diego neighborhood.
While all the women are important to the story, it's Loretta Swit who gets the most to do, encountering torn in his restaurant and actually falling in love with him even though she discovers too late that it is indeed him. Flashbacks to the past and the presence of a rather intimidating parrot shows the fear in her character, and her performance, once you get past the Eastern European accent, is phenomenal. In fact, of all the women, the accents to become less cartoonish as the drama increases although Valerie Harper's is a bit distracting.
Each of the women after the murder is revealed in the news writes their own confession, is dead and that created confusion among their husbands. It's a rather convoluted plot between the women, but you can understand their language and their desire to protect each other even though they don't know who really did it. Michael Lerner is the prosecuting attorney who has to check out each of the confessions and gives the most direct performance. All of the women get sympathy because they were indeed victims of Nazi cruelty, and even with his tenderness at times, Torn's character is obviously still a monster underneath his suave exterior, seemingly knowing somehow that Swit was one of his victims. A fascinating drama in spite of its flaws.
While all the women are important to the story, it's Loretta Swit who gets the most to do, encountering torn in his restaurant and actually falling in love with him even though she discovers too late that it is indeed him. Flashbacks to the past and the presence of a rather intimidating parrot shows the fear in her character, and her performance, once you get past the Eastern European accent, is phenomenal. In fact, of all the women, the accents to become less cartoonish as the drama increases although Valerie Harper's is a bit distracting.
Each of the women after the murder is revealed in the news writes their own confession, is dead and that created confusion among their husbands. It's a rather convoluted plot between the women, but you can understand their language and their desire to protect each other even though they don't know who really did it. Michael Lerner is the prosecuting attorney who has to check out each of the confessions and gives the most direct performance. All of the women get sympathy because they were indeed victims of Nazi cruelty, and even with his tenderness at times, Torn's character is obviously still a monster underneath his suave exterior, seemingly knowing somehow that Swit was one of his victims. A fascinating drama in spite of its flaws.