Determination of Death (2001) movie is a Life Insurance thriller. A classic example of life insurance fraud. Directed by Michael Miller. In order to free themselves from debt, a husband-and-wife plan to fake the husband’s death for the insurance money. The wife helps her husband stage his own death. US$ 5 million is the insurance money of the policy. Reese Williams and his wife Kate think of a perfect life insurance fraud, but each for different reasons. Reese wants to get the money to pay off his gambling debts;F Kate wants to escape Reese who beats for years.
Every character in the movie is a suspect. Everyone had a motive. Everyone had plenty of reasons to kill that beastly man who only made a nuisance of himself and destroyed everyone’s lives. Yet the mystery of his death becomes unfathomable. Everyone groping around in the dark for any clue without finding anything except loose ends. The tempo is slow to begin with but gradually builds up into a tremendous pile of mysteries collapsing into nothingness. Everyone is more or less proved innocent or at least convincingly so. And yet there is still the final dot on the final in the end.
In this movie there is an interesting situation wherein everybody would like to see her brother-in-law dead. And this seems to happen without anyone knowing how. Then a fat insurance policy of US$5million surfaces and the insurance company sends in their investigators, but they could not find out anything.
Thus, Determination of Death (2001) is a great TV murder mystery movie with a real shocker at the end. This movie is not big Hollywood stuff, but it was excellent for what it is.
The acting is gorgeous. Michele Greene almost takes the prize with hard competition from Veronica Hamel. George Dzundza, the insurance investigator is the ultimate glory of the show. The dialogs are terrific, and the music is excellent. This is something of a perfect life insurance fraud and thriller.
About the Author
Dr. K. Raja Gopal Reddy is a seasoned internationally qualified Insurance professional. What you are reading here, may not answer all the questions we have, but has the absolute power of asking unsettling questions which increase the interest in the strange world, and show the contradictory wonders lying just below the surface of the commonest things of life. Look at this disturbing but beautiful thought of Friedrich Nietzsche “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him”.
Dr. Reddy can be reached at: raja66gopal@gmail.com
