Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5572 in DVD
• Released on: 2001-09-17
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Czech, Danish, Finnish, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Swedish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 94 minutes

Amazon.com
This 1991 thriller by Joseph Ruben (True Believer) works up to a point: Julia Roberts plays an abused wife who fakes her death and starts anew under a different identity in Iowa. Her psychopathic husband (Patrick Bergin) figures it out and stalks her and her new boyfriend (Kevin Anderson). The best part of the film is the moody isolation of Roberts's life with Bergin. Ruben ingeniously stakes out the story by presenting what looks like an ideal life between the two--a nice house on the ocean, a seemingly healthy sex life, etc.--and then, whammo! Vital to the plot but less interesting is everything afterward, but that's less an inherent script problem than it is obvious studio pressure to push Roberts as a cute star. There's even a sequence where the actress tries on a series of hats while Van Morrison's "Brown Eyed Girl" plays on the soundtrack. Such insistent valentines to Roberts destroys most of Ruben's momentum and the film's credibility, and the project never quite recovers. --Tom Keogh

Special Features
1.85 Wide Screen
16:9 Anamorphic Wide Screen
DVD 9
English
English
Region 2
Dolby Digital 2.0 English
Dolby Digital 2.0
Interactive Menus
Scene Access
5 Videoclips
Trailer
Czech\Danish\Finnish\Hebrew\Hungarian\Icelandic\Norwegian\Polish\Portuguese\Swedish

Synopsis
Soon after marrying, a woman discovers her husband is compulsive, controlling and violent. Faking her own death, she escapes him and begins a new life with a new look in a new town where she'll never have to see him again. Or so she thinks...

Customer Reviews

Amazing!
This film, is by far, one of the best movies ever. The acting is great, the storyline is great, and the suspense is fantastic.

Storyline: Julia Roberts plays Laura, a young, married woman, who on the surface, leads a happy life. But behind closed doors, her life is a nightmare. Her husband beats her. One night, they go sailing, and Laura falls into the water, and her husband thinks she has drowned, because she could never swim. Only, she had learned to swim, and she had not drowned. She escaped, and swam back to shore, where she gathered her things and fled. She now lives a new life, under a new identity, hoping and praying that her husband won't discover that she's alive and find her. Only, he does, and he is after her..

This film is fantastic, and I have yet to find anyone who didn't like it. If you're buying a new movie, then this is definitly one for your collection. I'd give it 100/100.

brilliant acting- scary
although now obviously a little dated, this is one of my favourite films with a good story line. Julia Roberts, as always, very good in the role of the nervous and frightened wife and Patrick Bergin at his most calm, quiet yet menacing character. You anticipate what will happen next but the whole film is held together very well with a breathtaking climax.

Okay

It's alright, but very different from the book that Nancy Price wrote. The place where Laura and her husband stay is not actually their home, but in fact a holiday place.
He doesn't find her ring down the toilet either, but discovers most home truths through lots of diarys she has written.
When she escapes from Martin and finds a new place, it isn't a house, but an apartment. She works as a carer down the street to pay her way.

The film is much better than the book, but the book is more realistic than the film. The film is too easy. Although I do like the romance of both characters and I do delight in her happiness. If her husband didn't come looking for her at the end, I would definitely disgruntled with it, because that creates thrill and excitement and the scary put of it you need to see.