In this well-paced thriller, Jennifer Beals shines as the quick-thinking FBI agent who uses unorthodox methods to solve crimes. Beals' SA Jennifer Beck is the centerpiece of a film with a clever design and a solid set of performances.

SA Beck had a traumatic experience when she was wounded during a stake-out. The result was neurological damage that has led her to become a psychic. Beck puts her talents to good use in a kidnapping case with a paper trail leading to a Silcon Valley tech company that is getting off the ground and will soon be worth millions.

There is a strange triangulated relationship between the two male partners. One is single and the other is married with a lovely daughter. After the daughter is kidnapped, Beck senses that all three characters may be lying.

There was one place where the plotting became strained with an apparent hitman paid to kill one of the business executives. That strand of the narrative was never resolved.

Still, the film is worth seeing for Beals' complex portrait of a dedicated FBI agent. This G-Woman will let nothing stand in her way of getting to the bottom of things for what is for one of the characters the "perfect crime." But the perp never counted on the special skills of Special Agent Beck.

Jennifer Beals carries this movie through to acceptability, but everyone, including the character Beals portrays, has a wooden aura about them in this low budget mystery about a bunch of depraved, rich stiffs investigated by glum FBI stiffs. This movie may take the record for the having the most unlikable characters. Beals as well as her character manage to pull it off without much support. The far-fetched but still satisfying ending makes suffering through the clunky build-up barely worth it.

...with bad acting, a bad script, a bad pace, and an awful movie.

Jennifer Beals, whom I have always liked, stars in Troubled Waters, a Canadian production. Beals plays Jennifer Beck, a police detective who says her lines like someone on Dragnet. She was involved in a shooting and still has bullet fragments in her head which give her headaches. Apparently the shooting also made her psychic, something she hides from her fellow officers.

When a little girl goes missing from her room, Beck and her partner, Andy (Jonathan Goad) a man with one of the thickest Canadian accents you'll ever hear, go to investigate. I want to say that despite the red herrings, I had this thing figured out in the first minute. And that's not because I'm a genius.

Beck starts getting all kinds of psychic visions, but frankly, I don't know what plot line was doing in there because it really didn't help he case all that much. Beck suspects adultery, and she has a villain for the kidnapping in mind. What she doesn't realize is that there is another crime that was supposed to be committed, and the kidnapping and the other crime are confounding the investigation and who the suspects are.

At one hour and 45 minutes, this movie felt longer than Gone with the Wind and Howard's End combined. The dialog was awful. The initial scene between the husband and wife was one of those "I know we've been having a hard time because I've been busy but I'm going to make it up to you" scenes that I've seen 50,000 times - in each case done better. Totally by the numbers. Jennifer Beals was required to say "I'm fine" about 100 times during the film as she grabbed for aspirin to take care of her headache that she said she didn't have. As Beck, she exhibited no personality trait except a quiet surliness throughout. Sharon Lewis played another detective who was constantly telling Beck's partner how Beck is a bad detective. There was no reason for this character, and her acting was abominable.

The denouement was no surprise to me at all. Structured better, directed with more pace, stronger acting, and someone redoing of the script, as derivative as "Troubled Waters" is, it still could have been very good. Instead, it was lousy.

One final thing. When the girl's father went to New York for a conference, by the way, it looked as much like New York as Alma, Nebraska does.