**SPOILERS** We see what looks like a video taped recording of Ellen McCarthy's, Marlo Thomas, last will and testament where she, in a number of segments throughout the film, spills her guts out in regards to her late husband Grove McCarthy, William Devane.
Grove a pillar of strength and economic independence in the community has disappeared in his sail boat some two weeks ago and has been given up for dead by everyone but the towns top cop Det. Hal Kazin, Vondie Curtis-Hall. It's not that Det. Kazin doesn't believe that Grove is dead he feels that he was murdered, not lost at sea, by his wife Ellen.
As we soon see Ellen has trouble telling the truth which has to do with where she was at the time of her husbands disappearance. There's also the fact that Grove's financial institution, the fastest growing in the USA, has been misappropriating hundreds of millions of dollars from its many depositors in an elaborate Ponzi Scheme that Grove was suspected of engineering.
The plot starts to thicken when Grove's partner and best friend Ken Sprading, Andrew Robertt, starts to get cold feet and tries to have Ellen somehow do his dirty work for him in implicating her husband, who's body has yet to be found, in the Ponzi Scheme. It later turns out that Ken himself set Grove up and then took off with the cash leaving Grove to try to Ponzi his way out of the trap that Ken put him in. It's later when Grove's body, as well as sail boat, is recovered that it becomes evident that he didn't kill himself as at first believed but was murdered! The question now is who murdered Grove with the whole town of Fairfield as suspects!
***SPOILERS*** We finally get the lowdown, through Ellen's shocking video tape,to what were the circumstances that lead to Groves death and they aren't very pretty. It was a family affair in Grove getting himself smashed and losing control of his senses and libido. This had him hooked,in the neck, to death with a shocked Ellen being the one who ended cleaning up the mess. Despite being a real sicko and in your face alcoholic who even wanted to get his teenage step daughter Katie, Emily Barclay, smashed on champaign Grove was an innocent victim of a financial crime that he in fact had nothing at all to do with.
It was Groves weakness as a human being that was exploited by those who bankrupted his business that brought the very worst out of him. And in the end it was Grove who took the rap, posthumously, for those who used him in obtaining their ill gotten gains!
Grove a pillar of strength and economic independence in the community has disappeared in his sail boat some two weeks ago and has been given up for dead by everyone but the towns top cop Det. Hal Kazin, Vondie Curtis-Hall. It's not that Det. Kazin doesn't believe that Grove is dead he feels that he was murdered, not lost at sea, by his wife Ellen.
As we soon see Ellen has trouble telling the truth which has to do with where she was at the time of her husbands disappearance. There's also the fact that Grove's financial institution, the fastest growing in the USA, has been misappropriating hundreds of millions of dollars from its many depositors in an elaborate Ponzi Scheme that Grove was suspected of engineering.
The plot starts to thicken when Grove's partner and best friend Ken Sprading, Andrew Robertt, starts to get cold feet and tries to have Ellen somehow do his dirty work for him in implicating her husband, who's body has yet to be found, in the Ponzi Scheme. It later turns out that Ken himself set Grove up and then took off with the cash leaving Grove to try to Ponzi his way out of the trap that Ken put him in. It's later when Grove's body, as well as sail boat, is recovered that it becomes evident that he didn't kill himself as at first believed but was murdered! The question now is who murdered Grove with the whole town of Fairfield as suspects!
***SPOILERS*** We finally get the lowdown, through Ellen's shocking video tape,to what were the circumstances that lead to Groves death and they aren't very pretty. It was a family affair in Grove getting himself smashed and losing control of his senses and libido. This had him hooked,in the neck, to death with a shocked Ellen being the one who ended cleaning up the mess. Despite being a real sicko and in your face alcoholic who even wanted to get his teenage step daughter Katie, Emily Barclay, smashed on champaign Grove was an innocent victim of a financial crime that he in fact had nothing at all to do with.
It was Groves weakness as a human being that was exploited by those who bankrupted his business that brought the very worst out of him. And in the end it was Grove who took the rap, posthumously, for those who used him in obtaining their ill gotten gains!