I am a huge fan of Alfred Hitchcock's movies and before watching this movie I was hoping that this was going to be something good which it did start out that way and during the course of its ninety nine minutes gets gradually worse and more predictable. Julia Roberts stars as Laura a young woman who is seemingly in a good relationship with her husband Martin (Patrick Bergin) but within the first few minutes of the movie we end up learning that things aren't at all what they seem to be at first glance and also that Martin is very controlling as well as physically, verbally, and psychologically abusive towards her and is very obsessed over the littlest things imaginable. One night Laura and her husband decide to go boating in the ocean in a thunderstorm and she ends up faking her own death and then moving to Iowa, changing her identity and moving on with her life. After she moves into her new house in Iowa she meets and falls in love with a drama teacher named Ben (Kevin Anderson), but during each of the times they meet he senses that she's hiding something and so it takes some time for her to tell him everything that happened to her. Then Martin somehow discovers that she's still alive and goes to great lengths to find her. The movie does have good things about it like the opening scenes as well as the scenes between her and Ben and their growing affection between one another. The problems with this movie truly outweighed the positives for me with this movie because I really wanted to like this movie but found myself getting more and more disappointed towards the end. The movie was directed by Joseph Ruben with a screenplay by Ronald Bass (who co-wrote the screenplay for "Rain Man") which really disappointed me even more because the moments which were supposed to strike tension just didn't work at all thanks to the abysmal screenplay. Julia Roberts is usually a good actress but I get the sense that she tried the best she could with this material but was limited by the script, and with Bergin I had the impression that he was trying too hard to be a manipulative sociopath. In the end the movie is a total failure because of its truly major shortcomings.
Review of Sleeping with the Enemy
