Lifetime's 'Your Family or Your Life' focuses on family relationships, makes for a watchable thriller
Spoiler alert
The film succeeds in portraying family relationships and most importantly friendship as it is evident through the brilliant chemistry between Kathy and Michelle. Through the film, it can be understood that the major conflict lies in the struggle to obtain justice whilst the most powerful of the lot do anything and everything possible to sabotage it. The film contains several loose ends, which may seem to explode like on your head in the form of a climax.
However, the problem with the film is that it jumps into different timelines and it becomes difficult to decipher the events of the past and the present. However, it's not misleading. Another good thing about this film is that its background score is intense, especially when David died, it set a mournful mood.
It begins with a man snooping around the house, looking for something specific but gets knocked out by Kathy. It sort of sets the mood that the protagonist, Kathy, is in no mood to deal with nonsense and is on her guard to protect her daughter. The story unfolds through a flashback, giving us a sneak peek into what happened six days earlier. We see a happy family and David was still alive.
David was working on a high-profile case, and he was seen recording some information on a recorder. It was very clear that his life was in danger and he had to be protected. We find out, that his colleague, John had backstabbed him by helping Erica, in an attempt to wipe out any evidence against her that would convict her for the fraud that David had been making the case on.
Erica had strategically planned the murder and despite loopholes that got other people involved, she killed anybody who came into her way. Anyhow, David gets murdered by Ed, a contract killer, who makes it look like he committed suicide.
Kathy and April were devastated to learn that David had committed suicide. But David was a smart man who left a coded suicide note, which Kathy was able to decode and follow the case he had been working on. Kathy goes on a mission to find her husband's murderers and protect whatever is left of her family. We also find out that David was murdered by Ed, and how he had triggered David's alcohol addiction so that the evidence proves it as a suicide.
The events that lead to the climax are interesting. April's boyfriend is Daemon, a very sketchy character, who has absolutely no clue what is happening. He is nothing but a mere puppet controlled by Erica. Oh, by the way, Daemon is Erica's nephew, so basically, he was just following her orders because she gave him a good lifestyle and funded his expences. He did the job of dating David's daughter. Since April trusted him, she revealed some confidential information, but all that 'trust' since he drugged her as directed by his puppeteer. Right after, he is sneaking around the house in search of a recorder that David had hidden in the house and the files which contained all the evidence. So, now that opening scene makes sense because we know who it was and why it happened.
The grand finale involves too many revelations, but the end answers all your questions. Erica is portrayed as a woman who has 'friends' way out of anybody's legal league, and that she cannot be touched by anybody. She killed Ed in front of the cops and it could not get any stupider than that. Why would you shoot a contract killer in front of the cops, he probably would have had a long jail time and a miserable life after! But her fate led her straight into the cop's car as she had to surrender.
Anyway, Kathy and Mitchel have amazing coordination as they solve the case on their own. They use the American Sign Language to communicate and that's really beautiful because nobody except them would understand it, in this context. They finally succeed in avenging David's death single-handedly without much involvement of the police.
