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	Printed Articles & Interviews The Canadian Press September 6, 2004

Bruce Greenwood as a dedicated lawman
in two TV highlights next week

Actor Bruce Greenwood, left, gestures upon arrival at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2002. (CP/Aaron Harris)

Monday, September 06, 2004

(CP) - Vancouver's scuzzy downtown eastside open-air drug market has been a ripe subject for B.C.-based drama, most notably in the enduring crime series Da Vinci's Inquest. Now Da Vinci creator-producer Chris Haddock has partnered with executive producer Pierre Sarrazin to produce a TV movie of the week, The Life, airing Sunday night on television.

The film was inspired by Through a Blue Lens, the documentary shot on the city's skid row by cops themselves. Bruce Greenwood stars as a 20-year veteran of the force who grew up along Hastings Street and feels there's a better way to deal with the hopeless cycle of addiction and poverty. Despite department protests, he begins videotaping addicts who agree to tell their miserable stories to the camera, and the results prove devastatingly effective when shown to classrooms of high-school students.

Haddock even brought along Da Vinci stars Nicholas Campbell and Ian Tracey for cameo parts in the film, directed with such streetwise intensity by Lynne Stopkewich that viewers may not be able to tell the difference between real denizens of the area and bit players.

The film attempts to be as uplifting and optimistic as possible considering the seemingly endless misery, but at the end there's no clear indication of what happened to the video Greenwood and his partner shot - whether, like Through a Blue Lens, it became a real documentary or not.

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In December, Gary Leon Ridgway (known as the Green River Killer) admitted murdering 48 women in the Seattle area - so many he couldn't remember where he left all the bodies. His 48 convictions were the most for any serial killer in U.S. history.

Now The Riverman dramatizes the real-life crime investigation into Ridgway's reign of terror: how notorious serial killer Ted Bundy helped former homicide detective Robert Keppel solve the Green River murders before his own execution in 1989. Bruce Greenwood (again) stars as Keppel and Cary Elwes plays Bundy in the film, which airs Monday on A&E.

© The Canadian Press, 2004

Canadian Press Report