The lawyer Thelma "T.K." Knudsen Katwuller (Barbara Hershey) is having a love affair with her client Steven Seldes (J.T. Walsh) that is accused of making under-age porn movies through the Blue Screen Production. When T.K. meets her old college friend Ellie Seldes (Mary Beth Hurt), she finds that she is Steven's wife and Ellie invites T.K. to have dinner with her family at her home. T.K. decides to break-up with Steven and he asks her to meet him in his office. While waiting for Steven, T.K. finds that he owns the Blue Screen Production and had lied to her. When Steven arrives in the office, T.K. fights with him and stabs him in self- protection. On the next morning, Ellie is arrested is accused of murdering her husband and Ellie hires T.K. to defend her. T.K. believes that the killer is the violent father of a teenager the made a porn movie produced by Steven, but Detective Beutel (Sam Shepard) feels that something is missing in the case.

"Defenseless" is one of my favorite thrillers from the early 90's. I have just watched it today on DVD, maybe for the third or fourth time, and I still like this underrated film. The plot has many twists, and Barbara Hershey and Sam Shepard are in the top of their careers. The 27 year-old Kellie Overbey is convincing in the role of an abused teenager. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Sem Defesa" ("Defenseless")

Not a bad little thriller. Sure, there are some plot holes. But the production values are decent, nothing to complain about with the direction or photography. The cast did a pretty decent job with mediocre material. I rented the DVD and found that some scenes had been cut. One of the previous commentators mentioned a scene that was not in my version. Plus, there were two brief topless scenes by Kelley Overbey that were not in this version. I like gratuitous nudity as much as the next guy, but these cuts hurt the film. One wasn't totally necessary, but definitely falls into the category of character development. The other scene was major plot exposition, and the film suffered badly for its loss. IMDb doesn't have an age for Miss Overbey, and I wonder if she may not have been eighteen at the time. That's the only reason I can think of for cutting this film into incoherence for the DVD release. Too bad.

Police try to solve the murder of a businessman. Unknown to them, the man's attorney is implicated and, of course, she wants to keep her involvement secret. This leads to the wrong person being charged, causing the lawyer to go looking for the real culprit. Good mystery with lots of action and tense drama.