This is a disturbing view into an irreparable marriage, one where the wife takes all she can until the husband turns violent. She's put up with his disinterest in searching for a new job since he became disabled as a police officer, his public insults and his general unpleasantness. It's a dramatic situation for Victoria Principal, and she is frighteningly real as her torment from soon to be ex-husband Robert Hays becomes all the more dangerous. She avoids make-up in scenes that show her after she's been brutally beaten then cleaned up, necessary for those particular scenes.
This film often is uncomfortable to watch because it delves into subjects that make you feel you're being intrusive even though someone should step in when situations like this occur. The fact that Hays is a former police officer protects him as evidenced in a scene in court where the judge refuses to put him in jail for rape. He has moments where he's very gentle with her after abducting her, yet you fear how he could suddenly switch back to the maniac he's shown that he is.
While the audience is used to Principal in dramatic roles, seeing the star of "Airplane!" in a humourless part like this is quite jolting. You get to see him go from hopeful new husband, kind and spirited, to a boiling angry psychopath, and while he doesn't deserve any sympathy, at least his transition is presented in a believable manner. It's one of the scariest transitions from comedy to drama I've ever seen, and unlike Leslie Nielsen in "Nuts", the urge to laugh is not there.
But there's trouble that exists in this gripping story with a flashback following every scene set in the present. There's also some twists in the last half hour that takes this too far down the path of melodrama with Hays indicating that he intends to kill her before killing himself, after which he takes her clothes shopping then out to a fancy dinner. Certainly the headlines show situations like this having really occured, and this is apparently a true story, but that later twist makes this seem exploitive and more intrusive than before, so the viewer should be warned before that this is not just depressing. It's mega depressing.
This film often is uncomfortable to watch because it delves into subjects that make you feel you're being intrusive even though someone should step in when situations like this occur. The fact that Hays is a former police officer protects him as evidenced in a scene in court where the judge refuses to put him in jail for rape. He has moments where he's very gentle with her after abducting her, yet you fear how he could suddenly switch back to the maniac he's shown that he is.
While the audience is used to Principal in dramatic roles, seeing the star of "Airplane!" in a humourless part like this is quite jolting. You get to see him go from hopeful new husband, kind and spirited, to a boiling angry psychopath, and while he doesn't deserve any sympathy, at least his transition is presented in a believable manner. It's one of the scariest transitions from comedy to drama I've ever seen, and unlike Leslie Nielsen in "Nuts", the urge to laugh is not there.
But there's trouble that exists in this gripping story with a flashback following every scene set in the present. There's also some twists in the last half hour that takes this too far down the path of melodrama with Hays indicating that he intends to kill her before killing himself, after which he takes her clothes shopping then out to a fancy dinner. Certainly the headlines show situations like this having really occured, and this is apparently a true story, but that later twist makes this seem exploitive and more intrusive than before, so the viewer should be warned before that this is not just depressing. It's mega depressing.