TV REVIEWS : Town Bully at Large in ‘Broad Daylight’

Brian Dennehy, familiar as a lovable salt-of-the-earth type, makes a Faustian pact with a hellish role and turns in a chilling performance Sunday in the movie “In Broad Daylight” (9 p.m. on Channels 4, 36 and 39).

The focus is so taut in this true-life story of a sociopath who terorrized a small town in Missouri 10 years ago that writer William Hanley and director James Sadwith create a momentum that’s as tight as a spiral. There’s nothing extraneous. Nothing gets in the way of Dennehy’s nervy campaign of calculated mayhem in a movie whose theme and even structure echo “High Noon,” minus Gary Cooper.

In any event, it’s certainly a Midwestern Western, with John Frick’s production design and Robert Draper’s lenses catching the flat, pale clapboard dreariness of a small town that turned vigilante to save itself from a madman the law couldn’t handle. (The script is based on the nonfiction book “In Broad Daylight” by Harry MacLean).

At first you will not even recognize Dennehy. His bulk is familiar (and underlines the show’s menacing tone), but the dark shoe-leather hair and piercing, grinning visage catch you off guard.

Psychologically, the self-destructive Dennehy character, who literally never stops smoking, is a fascinating study. He’s not a one-dimensional villain at all. He’s a terrific family man, great with his brood of loving children. A conversation he has with his 4-year-old daughter about wives and mothers is charming.

On the other hand, he emotionally bludgeons women.

In a demanding role, his young, edgy but fiercely loyal wife is strongly played by Marcia Gay Harden.