Director: Michael Apted
Cast: Jennifer Lopez, Billy Campbell, Juliette Lewis, Dan Futterman, Fred Ward
Released: May 24, 2002
Viewed in theaters: June 2, 2002
This movie. OMG, this movie. It could have been so good if it had a better screenplay, if it weren't so damned rushed and made more sense! It was like this movie just couldn't wait to the part where J-Lo lays the smackdown on her husband (or was he her ex by this time? IDK...tells how much I was paying attention to it!) Yes, this is the movie where J-Lo beats up her abusive husband and you are rooting for her to do it because he just smacks her around (and even pushes their five year old daughter off of him when she jumps on him when he's beating up her mom and that really pisses off J-Lo). Apparently it's based on a book by Anna Quindlen called "Black and Blue. " (I can't remember if you italicize, underline, or put book titles in quotation marks, so I did all three!) I have a feeling it's very loosely based on that book.
The way Slim (Lopez - and who the hell is named "Slim"? Sounds like it should have been one of her aliases instead of her real name!) and Mitch, the abusive husband (Billy Campbell) meet doesn't make any sense. Slim is a waitress at a diner in L.A. along with her best friend, Ginny (Juliette Lewis) and one afternoon this guy, I don't know his name, but we'll just call him Carter since he's played by Noah Wyle, so Carter is sitting in a booth reading a book being waited on by Sim and he's flirting with her and Ginny tells Slim to ask him out so she goes back and starts flirting with him and they make plans for a date and as this is going on, I'm thinking, I don't remember Carter being the abusive husband in this, but then the camera pans farther back so we see a guy get up in the booth behind Carter and tell him he's a jerk because he overheard Carter making a bet with a friend that he could get Slim to sleep with him and this makes Slim angry and tells Carter to get out. The guy who had defended her is Mitch and she is very thankful for what he did and they end up dating and get married and have a daughter. And everything is fine as they are the picture of a happy family until one day, Slim finds out her husband is cheating on her. By now their daughter is about five, so everything has been going pretty smoothly for at least five years. When Slim confronts him about this, he smacks her and tells her some bs about he has needs that she can't fulfill.
We also later found out that he's friends with Carter (who didn't see that coming?) and they had planned this little trick along. I don't know why he ended up marrying Slim if she wasn't satisfying him and why he wanted to stay married to her, but he gets really possessive of her and it was really weird how they were happy for at least five years and then he snaps and starts acting like a total jerk to her. Oh, and the time it takes from when they meet to the first time he hits her? Seven minutes. I'm pretty sure that's what it was. It was really rushed! And remember, this is in a span of at least five years! WTF?
So Slim keeps getting smacked around and she tries everything she can to escape but this guy has thought of everything and she can't get past him. Even when she escapes with her daughter to stay with a friend, Joe (Dan Futterman) in Seattle, Mitch and his cronies suspect that she might be there and threaten Joe so Slim leaves because she doesn't want to put anyone she cares about in danger.
With the help of Ginny, Slim and her daughter do managed to escape for quite a while without being detected by Mitch. She has cut her hair really short and changed her name to Erin. She is able to get money from her rich estranged father, Jupiter (Fred Ward) so she doesn't have to worry about her finances. They're there for a few months before Carter finds them (I forget how he tracked them down) and he tries to run her car off the road which results in a long car chase until she drives under a structure which his huge SUV can't fit under and he gets stuck.
The time has finally come for the attack! Slim has had one training session with a buff black dude (okay, it was probably more than one session, but the way it was filmed, it looked like she learned all this stuff in one day) and she is ready to kick Mitch's ass. She sneaks into his house at night and while he goes to work the next day, she accesses the place and moves his guns so he won't be able to find them, learns how to cut off and turn back on the power, moves the furniture around so she won't get tripped up on it when she's fighting Mitch. He comes home later that night and we get the big show down between the two of them and I do love the scene where Slim smacks Mitch and he says he doesn't want to fight and she goes, "Oh, so now you can't hit back? You didn't have trouble hitting me when I was defenseless." It doesn't take long before he is pissed off and starts hitting back. There's a moment where she has an opportunity when he is (seemingly) conscious, but she can't do it, so she calls her friend, but while on the phone, she gets attacked and knocked out by him. But she's not totally knocked out that she can't kick him in the groin and send him flying off the balcony to his death. Or something like that. I can't remember exactly how it went. She ends up reunited with her daughter (who she sent on a vacation with her friend and her children) and ends up with Joe. Yay.
I seriously felt like I was getting whiplash from this movie.
The way Slim (Lopez - and who the hell is named "Slim"? Sounds like it should have been one of her aliases instead of her real name!) and Mitch, the abusive husband (Billy Campbell) meet doesn't make any sense. Slim is a waitress at a diner in L.A. along with her best friend, Ginny (Juliette Lewis) and one afternoon this guy, I don't know his name, but we'll just call him Carter since he's played by Noah Wyle, so Carter is sitting in a booth reading a book being waited on by Sim and he's flirting with her and Ginny tells Slim to ask him out so she goes back and starts flirting with him and they make plans for a date and as this is going on, I'm thinking, I don't remember Carter being the abusive husband in this, but then the camera pans farther back so we see a guy get up in the booth behind Carter and tell him he's a jerk because he overheard Carter making a bet with a friend that he could get Slim to sleep with him and this makes Slim angry and tells Carter to get out. The guy who had defended her is Mitch and she is very thankful for what he did and they end up dating and get married and have a daughter. And everything is fine as they are the picture of a happy family until one day, Slim finds out her husband is cheating on her. By now their daughter is about five, so everything has been going pretty smoothly for at least five years. When Slim confronts him about this, he smacks her and tells her some bs about he has needs that she can't fulfill.
We also later found out that he's friends with Carter (who didn't see that coming?) and they had planned this little trick along. I don't know why he ended up marrying Slim if she wasn't satisfying him and why he wanted to stay married to her, but he gets really possessive of her and it was really weird how they were happy for at least five years and then he snaps and starts acting like a total jerk to her. Oh, and the time it takes from when they meet to the first time he hits her? Seven minutes. I'm pretty sure that's what it was. It was really rushed! And remember, this is in a span of at least five years! WTF?
So Slim keeps getting smacked around and she tries everything she can to escape but this guy has thought of everything and she can't get past him. Even when she escapes with her daughter to stay with a friend, Joe (Dan Futterman) in Seattle, Mitch and his cronies suspect that she might be there and threaten Joe so Slim leaves because she doesn't want to put anyone she cares about in danger.
With the help of Ginny, Slim and her daughter do managed to escape for quite a while without being detected by Mitch. She has cut her hair really short and changed her name to Erin. She is able to get money from her rich estranged father, Jupiter (Fred Ward) so she doesn't have to worry about her finances. They're there for a few months before Carter finds them (I forget how he tracked them down) and he tries to run her car off the road which results in a long car chase until she drives under a structure which his huge SUV can't fit under and he gets stuck.
The time has finally come for the attack! Slim has had one training session with a buff black dude (okay, it was probably more than one session, but the way it was filmed, it looked like she learned all this stuff in one day) and she is ready to kick Mitch's ass. She sneaks into his house at night and while he goes to work the next day, she accesses the place and moves his guns so he won't be able to find them, learns how to cut off and turn back on the power, moves the furniture around so she won't get tripped up on it when she's fighting Mitch. He comes home later that night and we get the big show down between the two of them and I do love the scene where Slim smacks Mitch and he says he doesn't want to fight and she goes, "Oh, so now you can't hit back? You didn't have trouble hitting me when I was defenseless." It doesn't take long before he is pissed off and starts hitting back. There's a moment where she has an opportunity when he is (seemingly) conscious, but she can't do it, so she calls her friend, but while on the phone, she gets attacked and knocked out by him. But she's not totally knocked out that she can't kick him in the groin and send him flying off the balcony to his death. Or something like that. I can't remember exactly how it went. She ends up reunited with her daughter (who she sent on a vacation with her friend and her children) and ends up with Joe. Yay.
I seriously felt like I was getting whiplash from this movie.
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