While the actual payoff moments are generic facsimiles from previous home invasion thrillers, "No Good Deed" is overall a solid effort, thanks in large part to the amount of time the filmmakers were willing to spend in the setup phase, gradually increasing the tension.
Idris Elba turns in a strong performance (probably better than the film deserves) as Colin Evans, a man imprisoned for manslaughter (but also suspected of several murders) who escapes from a prison transport early in the film. When his vehicle crashes, he finds his way to a nearby home. A woman and her two children are the only ones home as her husband is away on a trip. The film's trailers would have you believe that Colin quickly breaks into the house, immediately revealing himself as dangerous. Instead, they do something more clever and interesting. After claiming to be waiting for a tow truck, the woman invites him into the home, and a lengthy chunk of the film is devoted to seemingly benign conversation between the two (and, eventually, a friend who has come over for a "girls' night"). All the tension comes from the audience's knowledge of the danger Colin poses and the other characters' lack of that knowledge. Elba comes across as very charming in these scenes, injecting just the right amount of subtle menace into his performance to make it work. We know that events are about to spiral out of control, but the extended wait for that to happen was fun. It's like watching a game of cat and mouse that the mouse doesn't even know is being played.
Unfortunately, once the tension does finally break, the film has nothing new to offer. Most of your standard home invasion tropes are quickly put on display. They're done well, but it's still old hat. If you've seen one scene where the hero hits the bad guy over the head, then runs away to hide, allowing the villain to get back up and pursue without showing any ill effects from the concussion they should have received, you've seen them all. You know it's going to eventually end with a final physical confrontation where, after surviving a multitude of fatal wounds, the villain will finally die after being shot, stabbed, thrown out a window, or maybe all three. Again, these moments weren't done poorly, but the film did feel as if it was on autopilot compared to the more intricately crafted first half. There was one clever plot twist near the end that helped make things interesting again, but the physical action was unable to work up anything fresh to match it.
While the moments that were supposed to be the most exciting fell short, the time taken to draw out tension during the setup, along with Elba's performance help this film to stand out in its genre, if only just a little.
B
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