I am giving it a 5/10 for the reasons I am going to list. If you watch the movie without picking it apart it's an enjoyable movie that portrays domestic violence and how fast a relationship can change for the worst. Having been in many abusive relationships in my life I feel her pain and frustrations. Her man is rich, he feels like he can have his cake and eat it too with no consequence. He wants to have his beautiful trophy wife to cook and clean and look after his house and child, but he also wants to go out and fool around with any woman he chooses on the side....He has the money, the contacts, and the motivation to make his wife's life a horror story if she doesn't just sit back and take it.
I found the acting and the plot in this movie pretty good, and worth the watch.
However......there are quite a few things about this movie that drove me nuts. This really was a horrible job of directing.
First of all this woman is lucky to have friends that are so supportive and willing to help. But why leave in the middle of the night instead of waiting till the daytime when he is at work? To count on him sleeping through her leaving in the middle of the night was just silly.
She is seen trying to rent a hotel room, supposedly in the middle of the night, but when her credit card is denied she is seen in broad daylight trying an ATM machine for money, AND going into a bank to try to make a withdrawal. Then it's nighttime again when she gets a room.
She then runs off to Joe's house, and after Mitch's goons leave it shows her packing all her stuff up. This is a woman on the run....you don't completely "move in" to places your temporarily staying. You would always have your stuff packed and ready to go at a moments notice.
You also would not take up residence in a house and spend all that time setting up booby traps instead of moving into a high rise security apartment. Not to mention, any woman in her situation who should have been in a heightened sense of paranoia would not be living in a house with sheer curtains, and open windows.
At one point it shows her getting all upset because her dinner "wasn't good" why has she all of a sudden forgotten how to cook? She was cooking for years for her husband prior to the cheating and abuse.
Throughout all of this, she didn't even try to get a divorce and arrange a custody agreement before deciding he had to die for her to get out of the relationship. I in no way shape or form support male dominance and violence......and a small part of me enjoyed seeing the abusive cheating ***hole die.....but even with his money he would not have gotten away with kidnapping the child while under a custody order. Killing him seemed a bit extreme.
Lastly, if you think about the final battle and the modern police investigative skills.....she would never have gotten away with it. There would have been a full out investigation into his death whether it seemed like self defense at the beginning or not. It never shows the aftermath, but when slim broke into Mitch's house she seemed to know the full layout and where to hide even though she had never been in there before. She cut (not disconnected) the phone lines, which would have been spotted by any greenhorn police officer in the investigation. Ginny called the police, but slim still had time to gather up and throw all the equipment (still in the bright yellow gym bag) she used for the break in and the fight (including rings that would have both hers and Mitch's DNA on them) into the shallow water just off Mitch's balcony, this surely would have been discovered a few days into the investigation.
And lastly....she is sitting outside when the police arrive, she barely had a mark on her, where Mitch looked like he had gone 10 rounds with Mike Tyson, he is dead......and the house looks like it had just survived a hurricane. I am sorry but that doesn't look like a fair fight to even a novice.
All in all I enjoyed the movie, I would, and have watched it many times. However it seems like the script was written overnight, never questioned by anyone, and the director was paying little to no attention to any continuity.
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