There is some surface tension in this story of two mass-murdering villains who plot to rob money from a police stash and kill a graphologist (or whatever he is), but the tension derives from hoary cinematic techniques and plot devices.

I'll give an example of a hoary cinematic technique and plot device. Thus: In an attempt to track down the villains by means of deduction, physical evidence, and computer skills, three investigators (including Henstridge and Scott) locate his lair in an abandoned warehouse. They creep upstairs to the loft, guns drawn, and examine the refrigerator and cabinets they find there. Henstridge open a cabinet door. There's a BOMB inside -- with a red digital read out. (Close up of numbers ticking down from the three minutes before detonation.) "Get out! Move!", shouts Henstridge. But Scott delays, tugging at some papers lodged between bricks. (Close up of read out showing about two minutes.) Henstridge rushes to Scott, tugs him, the papers come loose and they rush towards the door. (Close up of read out.) One of the guys stumbles on the staircase and the others hurry to help him to his feet. (Close up.) The three hobble awkwardly down three flights of stairs. (Close up.) They finally reach the street and run like hell. (Close up, showing all zeros in red digital read out.) BOOM, and the fourth floor is blown to bits. This is known as "cross cutting" and the first time it was used, as far as I'm aware, was in 1903, in Porter's "The Great Train Robbery." That is to say, at the time of this production, the technique was one hundred and four years old.

The rest of the plot has little to add, except that, instead of one murderer who is going to commit mass murderer at midnight, there are two who will commit the murders in different places. At times the plot seemed slapdash and confusing but I missed part of it, having been interrupted by a margin call from my broker. It took longer than I'd expected to convince him that the master was out and I was a maid with laryngitis.

You may wonder about the title. What is a "devil's tear drop," or is there any such thing? Well, in the novel and the movie there is. I don't know how common the term is among handwriting experts. You know -- when you dot a lower-case i -- you ordinarily leave a simple dot, like a period? (I disregard those who dot their i's with tiny circles or little hearts.) The devil's tear drop begins with a dot but then continues upward and to the right, diminishing as it goes, as if it were a transplant from a Chinese character.

The main theme of using documents to uncover the identity and location of the murderers might have been genuinely interesting, and informative as well. I don't mean deconstructing the writer's personality from the way he writes his letters. I'd guess that most experts can often tell a woman's writing from a man's, but beyond that it's mostly conjecture. The graphologists had pinned down the "Son of Sam" killer as an artist or engineer because of his neatly printed letters, whereas in fact he was a disorganized paranoid schizophrenic. But the main theme is clotted with back stories about family troubles in the lives of Henstridge and Scott, which I found irrelevant and boring.

This is a decent although unremarkable thriller in which the FBI recruits an ex-agent who is an expert in verifying and examining documents. He has a lot of personal issues including an ex-wife who wants the kids and a son who is still suffering the after-effects of being terrorized by a murderer he had put in prison several years before.

Although director Norma Bailey does a decent job in all departments and the actors handle their roles competently, the movie itself soon falls into fairly predictable patterns and scenes and the potentially interesting idea of showing how the analysis of documents and profiling of killers actually works is reduced to a few gadgets and flashes of insight. Instead we are distracted by family drama.

I cannot tell if the poverty in the script is due to Jeffrey Deaver's novel or to Ron Hutchinson's adaptation. I am not familiar with Mr. Deaver's works and the two other movies I have seen written by Mr. Hutchinson -- who also co-produced this TV-movie -- have not been very interesting, so I suspect it is not Mr. Deaver's responsibility. However, whoever is responsible, unless you are a fan of the genre, you can give this a miss.

First off, this is a typical Lifetime movie. Both the acting and dialogue is so-so. That having been said, I don't regret seeing this film.

This film is based off a book by Jeffrey Deaver and does maintain his use of a twist and a sinister villain. Like I said, the film isn't top notch but for fans of Deaver's, his story elements aren't betrayed. I also thought the subplot about the main character's custody battle and the reasons he didn't want to go back to helping law enforcement were well handed.

I guess what I'm saying is the core is good, even if the execution is not.