Review of Bloodlines: Murder in the Family

This is the true story of the Woodman murders, the affluent parents of Stewart and Neil Woodman who have been sentenced to life imprisonment for hiring hit-men to commit their murders so as to collect the insurance money. The first half of this made-for-TV movie is quite riveting whereas the second half is more the story of the wife's valiant struggle to come to terms with the demise of her comfortable bourgeois existence. Not to mention the difficulty in raising three children whose own worlds have shattered after the arrest of their father. We can sympathize with Melody Woodman's plight, but I would have liked to see Mimi Rogers less afraid to look awful, it would have made her role more believable. Thanks to the fine young actors we root for the kids despite their spoiled rottenness. As Stewart Woodman, Elliott Gould plays him so well, we feel truly pained to see him as the broken man that his incarceration has left him. All the actors are good, and this is one of the better TV movies made from the waist-deep true life murder cases.