Predrag
Nancy Price is a spell-binding writer who knows how to dodge every Hollywood cliché, as well as any happy ending Hollywood can imagine. Whatever you say about this film you got to admit it overflowed with clams at the box office. It is a good psychological thriller about an abused wife who gets revenge on her abusive husband and a story about men who treat women horribly ,then go to bed with them! Martin's beach front house is Big and Luxurious and one very beautiful beach front property near the sea that is trouble in paradise for Laura (Julia Roberts). First, it has a beautiful haunting score by Goldsmith. Next it has Roberts: beauty and talent. Her facial expressions tell the story. Martin looks at her, she smiles back. Martin turns away she sinks to near tears. It's hard not to feel for her. Roberts is an emotional communicator. Also you've got to give Bergin's acting some credit as a an effective mental case. His flat formal language and flying fist tantrums makes the viewer wonder what is next. He is one scary iceman. He tries for complete control of Laura, her dress, her cupboard, her bathroom towels. Laura is pretty well trapped by this beast. I think about the character Laura and find it very troubling that a woman being bullied can feel hopeless and unable to find help. Some have suggested Laura simply get a restraining order. I think a restraining order wouldn't even slow him down: not a man like that.Despite is amateurish failings, "Sleeping with the Enemy" was a huge hit. "Sleeping With the Enemy" is definitely watchable if you have a couple of hours to spare and if you can suspend disbelief and just sit back and enjoy it for the cheesiness of it and the 'easy on the eye' aspect. A great insight to how domestic violence can be at this extreme and how difficult it would be for the wife to escape the violence the amount of planing it would take and the time this would take while still being in extreme danger. The is a great film worth watching time and time again.Overall rating: 8 out of 10.
FilmBuff1994
Sleeping with the Enemy is a mediocre movie with a promising storyline that simply didn't end up being as good as it could have been and a good cast.I really don't think this movie should have been considered a thriller because there are altogether about five minutes of scenes that are genuinely thrilling,which is another 85 minutes of little excitement.While I did think the love story between Julia Roberts and Kevin Anderson was nice to watch and the actors had good chemistry,I really wasn't expecting,nor was I happy to see,that a very large portion of this movie is a romance.While it isn't awful,Sleeping with the Enemy fails to succeed in any genre it is considered to be and I honestly wouldn't recommend it to anyone. A woman tries to escape an abusive husband by faking her own death and a starting a new life.Best Performance: Julia Roberts
Steve Pulaski
Sleeping With the Enemy feels nothing so much as a Lifetime drama/thriller that was lucky enough to scoop up mainstream distribution into American cinemas. It's a perfunctory, often middling cross between the two genres, as it starts out giving us an interesting setup with characters and a dysfunctional relationship, before abandoning that to predicate upon a cat-and-mouse game between the couple. If it hadn't been for the interesting amount of tension director Joseph Ruben cooks up during this ninety-eight minute exercise, this review would be comprised of battle-words.The film's selling point is obviously Julia Roberts, who does what the script allows her to do efficiently. She plays Laura Burney, a relatively middle-aged woman living off the coast of Cape Cod with her husband Martin (Patrick Bergin) in a seemingly competent life-position. They talk a lot, they appear to be trusting, and they enjoy having sex in the dining room to Symphony Fantastique. Not long after their fling do we see why their relationship isn't so great; Martin, who suffers from a personality disorder, often abuses Laura if she does not perform tasks to his personal liking or if he assumes that she is being unfaithful. This causes a desperate strain on not only their relationship, but Laura's well-being. When the neighbor offers to take them sailing in a wild thunderstorm, Laura decides to fake her own death at sea and swim to a nearby shore. On the shore, she can begin a new life, under the name "Sara Waters," and leave the calamity behind her."Sara" soon meets a drama professor named Ben Woodward (Kevin Anderson), who tries to become close with her, but coming off a disastrous marriage, she wants nothing to do with men anymore. The remainder of the film showcases Ben's efforts to get closer to "Sara," and how Martin begins to pick up leads to her whereabouts where he can finally make her his own again.This kind of potboiler setup doesn't leave too much to be desired. The film has a very "scenic" attitude, meaning that much of the film is comprised of listless montages, pretty, yes, but substantial and worthy of inclusion, no. This makes the film inhabit a dreary state, where the characters are not that interesting to stay in-tune with, the plot is nothing but a simple kickstarter to get things going, and the relationships between characters are wholly unmemorable.Yet the most astonishing thing of all, setting aside the scenic atmosphere, the uninteresting characters, the tepid plot progression, and the redundancy of it all is the hammy acting by almost everyone involved. Even Roberts, who is often quaint and sophisticated in her roles. She recites her dialog with a wooden state of mind, seemingly reading it off a cue-card, making much of her delivery awkward and unpolished. Anderson and Bergin don't bring too much else to the table, other than the males in her life that are causing her untold grief.There is, however, a similarity to a newer movie that Sleeping With the Enemy brings to the table, and that film is Safe Haven, the latest adaptation in the line of Nicolas Sparks romance novels. Both of these films, while capitalizing off the same-type of premise, choose to go about their stories in different ways. Sleeping With the Enemy tries to craft a thriller out of the entire thing, providing a more nuanced relationship subplot in the background, while Safe Haven heavily emphasizes the romance value and only seeks out the thriller aspect towards the end of the film. Regardless, these are two examples of films with a promising premise that both provide hokey, unremarkable products in whatever direction they take. Despite this, both films provide competent direction and accentuate a usually difficult detail to capture well (Safe Haven being scenery, and this film being suspense). It's just too bad the surrounding elements in the same picture couldn't have buoyed it.Starring: Julia Roberts, Patrick Bergin, and Kevin Anderson. Directed by: Joseph Ruben.
tracethompson351
I read other reviews which I found rather amusing. Judging a personality in a film, we all know it is in the words of a movie, the actions and of course end of day an escape to something we may feel in touch with or detest. Life played on screen for the many. The character made a choice in youth. In love. Dreaming it was the life so many desire, her.. herself desired. Romance became jail. Life of being O.C.D for another who must hold the perfect life and trophy wife. Realising life should be about memories, family,love, fun and not chores or being correct she took the very choice she could... RUN... flush a gold ring it is light metal it is mixed with other metals. it should flush. No it doesn't ironically and terror of letting go and moving on ensues, new love never happens when stalked.True love will still however see it through if it is as meant.
