Editor’s Note: Freeline Media’s movie critic, Mike Fried, takes a look at ta cool Dale Dickey thriller now streaming on Prime Video, and well worth checking out.

By MIKE FRIED

The G (Prime Video)

*** 1/2

I don’t know how many of us are out there, but I am a Dale Dickey-Stan fan. So when Prime Video started showing her movie The G — only her second leading role in a career spanning 30 years — I was all in. 

This crime thriller is about an elderly woman who, along with her elderly husband, is evicted from her house by a corrupt legal guardian who liquidates and steals all her assets. Feeling frustrated because she is trapped in a system that will not aid her, she turns to revenge with the aid of her granddaughter.  

Taking its jumping off point as the constant and repeated elder abuse that occurs throughout the country, it turns the systemic abuse into a pretty well done thriller. And yes I fully admit — once again — that I am a huge fan of Dale Dickey and that plays a major factor in my review. What also plays a role is the shitty care my mom received in a nursing home. While I was not the evil guardian ( and my sister agreed with me, schmuck that she is) we encountered similar circumstances where guardians took advantage of other patients.  

It’s a dark and gritty film — think early Coen Bros. — and it derives a lot from not only Dickey’s committed performance but Karl Hearne’s steady and thoughtful direction and script. And its setting — a thoroughly depressing nursing home from which the inhabitants feel there is no escape — helps elevate the mood to a dark place. 

But it’s Dickey all the way as the powerhouse of the film. She knows that she is not a nice person, she’s had suicidal tendencies, she knows she was a lousy parent and an okay wife but no great shakes. And her granddaughter, in trying to help her, is becoming like her.  

Now with all the positives, there are negatives. None of the other performances are as a good as Dickey’s; rather, they are reliant on her performance. And the story feels a tad hollow, shading it as a crime thriller. And, finally, it seems to lose the thread of the story in the final act, going for full revenge rather than having the heart it had in the first two acts. 

But the positives far outweigh the negatives, creating one of 2025’s neatly hidden gems. 

Hail Dale!!!

WATCH IT!

3.5/5

Michael Fried has no formal training in movies, except having watched over 26,000+ movies — if not more — in his 60-plus years on this planet, starting with Goldfinger as his first cinema experience. He knows what he likes and he knows what he doesn’t like, and it’s quite often different from the conventional wisdom. He knows that the best franchise is Godzilla and he loves action movies and comedies. He has not been nominated for any awards except some boring insurance awards which has no applicability to movies (with the possible exceptions of Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity and John Cassavettes’ Big Trouble). He is part of a team that won the 1980 SUNY Albany Trivia content by correctly guessing the question, “Who played the president of Klopstockia in Million Dollar Legs?” So he has that going for him, which is nice.

Contact Mike at moviemike3@yahoo.com and mike.fried@yahoo.com.