TV REVIEWS : ‘Woman on the Run’: Running on Empty

Bambi II.

A year after ABC’s movie about convicted Lawrencia (Bambi) Bembenek’s cop-to-convicted-murderer-to-prison-escapee-to-captured-fugitive odyssey, comes NBC’s updated account based on Bembenek’s own book portraying herself as a tragic victim of framing.

Many agree with her, and it’s that side that’s told in the two-part “Woman on the Run: The Lawrencia Bembenek Story,” airing at 9 p.m. Sunday and Monday on Channels 4, 36 and 39.

If the ABC account was merely sympathetic to Bembenek without making a strong statement one way or the other, NBC’s depiction flat-out endorses her claim of innocence, with writer-director Sandor Stern’s script all but convicting the Milwaukee police of conspiring to frame Bembenek for the 1981 slaying of her then-husband’s first wife. Convicted of first-degree murder, she was sentenced to life.

At the very least, there is now evidence that she received an unfair trial. On her lawyer’s advice, however, she pleaded no contest to a reduced charge of second-degree murder in December, 1992, a legal chess move that gained her freedom after she had spent most of the previous 11 years in prison.

Although the media have always been interested in Bembenek primarily because of her terrific looks, she is an interesting figure whose story is arresting on several levels, starting with her charge of being victimized for resisting sexual harassment during her brief stint as a Milwaukee cop and for later blowing the whistle on the lewd conduct of male police officers in a public park. The story is at its best when methodically citing the gaping holes in the murder case against her.

But four hours of Bembenek? No way. Moreover, “Woman on the Run” repeatedly halts on a dime due to Tatum O’Neal’s lifeless performance as Bembenek, all the more noticeable because of the strong work by Bruce Greenwood as her unsavory former husband, Elfred Schultz, and of Peggy McCay and Colin Fox as her loyal parents. Nor does O’Neal ever capture the fetching physical presence and charisma that earned Bembenek a cult following and made her such a folk heroine when she escaped to Canada with the help of a boyfriend in 1990. In striking contrast to her story, which for a time held the public’s attention, this Bembenek is simply dull.