**SPOILERS** The movie starts just before 400:PM on 1/09/93 as we see young Julia Neuland, Brittany Murphy, walking to her job at the Time Out convenient store as she's picked up by some stranger as we never get to see his face. Later with a gun pointed to her head in the strangers pick-up truck the movie rewinds some six years back in time were we get to see just what lead up to this, what looks like, murderous event.
Being young and impressionable 16 year old Julia Neuland is working at her first job as a waitress at this dinner in the seedier part of town as she meets handsome and personable, as well as fellow Polish/American, policeman John Dubroski, Joe Penny, as one of her customers. Dubroski being very friendly toward Julia has her smitten by his charming and witty personality as soon as they meet. For the next three years the two meet at the diner, and later the Time Out connivance store, where they slowly fall in love.
Dubroski feeling that it's now all right, after three years, to make his move on Julia in that she's of the age, 19 years old, of consent the two get it on in the back seat of his pick-up truck in this deserted area, or lovers lane, at the Gunpowder Falls National Park. Within weeks Julia finds out that she's pregnant and Dubroski is the father. Dubroski who's married and has two kids one teenage Derek Kaminski, Shawn Hatosty, from another marriage is determined for Julia to get an abortion and goes as far as him willing to pay for it which has the shocked Julia, who thought all this time that the big lug was in love with her. This tryst is nothing compared when Duboski's old lady Cindy, Teri Garr, finds out about her husbands infidelity. Cindy opens up a letter containing a blood test from the John Hopinks Medical Center confirming that the baby ,Robert Joseph Neuland, that Julia had was definitely Dubroski's child! Cindy had no idea up until then that her husband was cheating on her!
We have Dubroski starting to lose it as he's in danger of losing his family with a wild and outraged Cindy beating the sh*t out of him in front of his kids as the big tough cop cowers in a corner pleading and whimpering, like a frightened little boy, for her to please stop. Patching things up with Cindy Dubroski is still very possessive of his now lost love Julia. When he finds out that she's going out with a young and handsome police trainee Eric, Thomas Mitchell, he completely goes off the deep end and that's when we come to where the movie started; 1/09/93 and the last moments on earth for the tragic Julia Neuland.
For some strange reason the movie never lets us know who was the person who kidnapped and murdered Julia even though it's more then obvious that is was her crazed and off-the-wall ex-lover John Dubroski. Dubroski is so cool and calm at what happened to Julia, until he's told about it at the precinct, that you get the impression that he could not have possibly murdered her! This shows just what a total psycho and sociopath the guy really is. It's at Dubroski's trial that we really get to see what goes on in Dubroski's very disturbed mind when he gets his not so on the ball step-son Derek to implicate himself in Julia's murder. Thus getting Dubroski off in an elaborate plan to then admit, after he's found innocent, his guilt and have Derek released with the fact of double-jeopardy keeping Dubroski from standing trial again for the same crime!
***SPOILERS*** Dubroski's evil yet birdbrain plan falls completely apart with nobody believing the obviously not all there Derek. The fact that he was idiotic enough to tell what he was going to do to his, now former, girlfriend Melanie, who testified in court to it, made Dubroski's conviction for murder a foregone conclusion. In the end we get to see the big jerk, John Dubroski, crying his eyes out and proclaiming his innocence as he's sentenced to life on January 6, 1994. Almost a year to the day after he murdered Julia with him acting as unfeeling, to his victim and her family, and cowardly as ever. Poor and tragic Julia gets the last word in as we hear her from beyond the grave telling us that her killer John Dubroski at least got life where she got death.
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