ReaderKenka Let's be realistic.

BroadcastChic Excellent, a Must See

SeeQuant Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Tyreece Hulme One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

Michael Ledo Ana Villafañe stars as Josephine Russo, a NYC woman placed in the witness protection program. She finds herself in the small town of Longview, Montana where she is given the identity of a teen under the care of social services. She has flashbacks to her instructions as to no contact, no cell phones, and no speaking Spanish, although when angered Spanish pours from her mouth. The high school she now attends has a group of girls similar to "the plastics." They are introduced with their own swagger music, and for a moment I thought this was going to be a pretty cool movie...but it didn't last long.Josephine takes a liking to a boy named Jesse (Tyler Blackburn). Of course the head plastic (Kelcie Stranahan) doesn't like Josephine because her ex-bf is hitting on her too.It isn't hard to figure out what is going to happen, if it didn't there wouldn't be a film.The movie has a made for TV quality to it, down to the cliche script, second tier acting, and cheap soundtrack.Ana, who was an artist in the film, sings a song during the closing credits to my surprise. Clearly this film was designed to showcase her talents. Too bad the script didn't support her. Teen movie all the way.PARENTAL GUIDE: No f-bombs, sex, or nudity.

ivegonemod This one didn't seem like it was going to be very good right from the start; and it wasn't. I found the script to be terrible, and the acting to be even worse."Jo" is in the witness protection program, and like most people in movies about the witness protection program, they never do what they are told. Jo seems intent on doing all the things she used to do in New York in her new home of Montana. She's rude to her foster mother on purpose, and just acts like a complete jerk most of the time. She doesn't seem all that upset about her parents being dead and just has a bad attitude.The bad girls in the movie are a complete joke. The acting is pathetic.I actually rooted for Jo to be found and killed somewhere along the way. If she doesn't care, why should I? There was an annoying scene where Jo draws a detailed sketch of the hit man who is following her. She draws this sketch in less than 30 seconds, when it would take any normal human 30 minutes.There's another annoying scene where Jo spots the hit man in the school's parking lot, but for some dumb reason decides to borrow a friend's truck and heads out to the parking lot alone, she knew the man was waiting for her! The end doesn't make any sense. Jo gets to stay in Montana in the witness protection program. The bad guys who killed the parents are still looking for her. What made no sense was that these bad guys sent the hit man, who found her in Montana. The hit man was no longer a threat, but do you mean to tell me that the hit man didn't tell his boss where Jo was hiding? How is it that he was planning to get the money he was owed for capturing her? It made no sense that the guy in charge of Jo would just assume that the hit man never shared her location. Why would he assume that? No clue.There was one review on here for this movie that really caught my attention. First off, Jo's foster mother was not an "old lady," she was in her 40's, it was made to sound like she was 69 or something. I thought "The old bats" granddaughter, was her daughter, but I could be wrong.

MrGKB ...but having received such short shrift here on the IMDb, it deserves at least one more comment/review. With "made for TV" stamped all over it, it's little surprise that "Hiding" went straight to video; it contains absolutely nothing that demands a big-screen presentation. "Hiding" is make-work all the way, presumably to showcase newcomer Ana "Los Americans" Villafañe (although how she's merits an "introducing" is beyond me, given her resume) and give a lot of 2d-tier people something to do. I'll give props to DP Danny "Blood Ties" Nowak for decent camera-wrangling and lighting, and to rising star Jeremy "Peter Pan" Sumpter for putting the integrity of his resume at risk.The primary failure of "Hiding," of course, is the utterly unsurprising by-the-numbers script that offers up some occasionally witty teen banter and little else. The characters, though not as stereotypical as one might fear, are mostly shallow and under- developed, and the plot is banal and full of holes. Does the witness protection program really leave its charges utterly marooned and isolated and sticking out like a sore thumb with blatantly faked records that even high-schoolers can ferret out? Does a subject like Jo actually take a Spanish class when she's already fluent and been instructed not to reveal it? And do trusted authority figures really reveal key private information to smarmy strangers?No matter. If one of the principals in the cast flips your switches, I suppose you could do much worse than this inadequate teen thriller, but you'd likely have to be fairly easy to please. Anyone looking for quality film entertainment should give this one a pass; they won't miss a thing.

Tss5078 One of my favorite actors, Jeremy Sumpter, leads a mostly unknown cast in the new direct-to-video drama, Hiding. I liked the concept behind this movie, but I don't like the part of the story they chose to focus on. The writers spent too much time on the present, without telling us enough about the past. While we have an idea of what happened, watching the beginning of this film is like arriving at the theater fifteen minutes late and having to play catch up the whole time. Joe (Ana Villafane) witnessed a murder in her home town of New York City. Being that she is the key witness against a major crime family, she is put into the witness protection program, given a cover story, and put into a new life in the middle of nowhere. The film begins with Joe being dropped at her new home, with a very vague description of what happened, what's expected of her, and how long she'll be there. From there the film kind of turns into a CW teen drama, which wasn't very appealing, however the filmmakers used flashbacks and side angles, to stop it from turning into Dawson's Creek. Sumpter plays one of two guys interested in Joe, as always he was dynamic, but here he was also funny and charming, a clear opposite of the other love interest, who just seemed to drone on and on. As for the lead, in her debut role, Ana Villafane was nothing short of terrific. This is not the kind of movie I go for and the focus was not on the part of the script that interests me, but the combination of Villafane and Sumpter, along with flashbacks and side stories did keep the film going. My description probably sounds quite dull, but Hiding keeps on moving and keeps your attention by using some pretty unconventional methods. It's not the best movie I've ever seen, but it was most definitely entertaining.