Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5458 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-02-07
• Rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Dubbed, PAL
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish
• Dubbed in: French, German, Italian, Polish, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 111 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
The Arab anti-defamation leagues understandably had a field day with this one. Sally Field plays Betty Mahmoody, an American who marries an Iranian (Alfred Molina) and has a child. They go back to Iran for a visit and, to her horror, he tells her he's decided to stay there. If she wants to leave, she must leave her daughter behind. If she stays, Betty must live in a culture vastly different and, she believes, very dangerous. Part thriller, part culture clash, the film certainly takes advantage of Americans' perceptions of Iran after the unrest of the '70s and early '80s. Molina is truly despicable as the husband, while Field projects a lot of overheated anguish as Betty tries to figure out a way to escape the country with her daughter. Overheated, in fact, is the word for the whole melodrama. --Marshall Fine, amazon.com

Synopsis
Betty Mahmoody (Sally Field) is an American woman, wife of an Iranian-born doctor, who travels to Iran under her husband's pretense of a vacation. She is horrified to learn her husband intends to live there and refuses to allow her or their daughter to leave. She then begins a desperate and dangerous plan to escape the country with her daughter. Based on a true story.

Customer Reviews

a harrowing tale of a clash of cultures
Based on Betty Mahmoody's account of her 18 months in Iran, this is a gripping, emotional roller coaster of a film that kept me riveted to the screen for all of its 115 minutes.
Though fearful, Betty agreed to go for a two-week visit to Iran with her husband Moody and daughter Mahtob, only to find at the end of the two weeks that her husband was fired from his job in the US, and he has no intention of leaving Iran. Moody's family are primitive village people, very extreme in their views, and Moody, at first to "save face, and then perhaps degenerating into the man he was before being "Americanized", inceasingly controls Betty with force and humiliation, all within the Ayatollah Khomeni's insane and rigorous Islamic state of 1984.

Her struggle to get out of Iran with her daughter is what this film is about (it would have been easy to leave alone), and there are many brave Iranians who risk their lives to help her. The claim that this film is racist is irrational, doesn't take these heroic people into consideration, and is an example of the narrow-minded intolerance shown in this film, a mindset that led to 9/11.
Though made in 1990, this is a very timely film to watch, and relates to the problem of abuse in every culture. I don't understand why it has slipped under the radar screen and is not more widely known. The acting is excellent by the entire cast, and the direction by Brian Gilbert is tight and feels like a top-notch thriller at times, with Jerry Goldsmith's terrific score and Peter Hannan's wonderful cinematography, shot on location in Israel, which is fantastic in the last portion of the film.
Sally Field and Alfred Molina give the performance of their lives, in what is much more than a "woman's film"; this is a film about humanity and extraordinary courage, and should have a much wider audience than it has had.

good Movie
After reading the book it is natural to feel disappointed about the movie. What we need to understand that the feelings and the characters' shown in the book cannot always be shown in a movie. You learn about what feelings and thoughts are inside character through the book. By reading the book first you are able to imagine and visualise what the character is feeling and what went on behind closed doors.

If you watch the video and then read the book. Then you are able to visualise and put a face to the character and when reading and you feel less disappointed. Otherwise this is a well scripted and interesting story. Only the ending is a little disappointing.

I read the book first and then watched the DVD.

A real story
I do not agree with the first viewer who marked this film as garbage. If he says that the film is a work of anti-Islamic thoughts, than he himself should re-think how he perceives other cultures...just by saying this.The review he has given here is his own opinion about the Americans not a review of the film! The main character, Betty, is a woman who tries to describe the hopelessness she felt over the situation of being deceived by her husbend and the cruel way she was treated in his own country. She followed him there because she trusted him. Through her eyes, what she experienced there was a culture that orders an utter obedience to women and leaves them hardly any rights, which was alien to her. There have been other cases of mistreating women in the Far East and I am sure they did not make it up just to make a movie! Other than that, it is great that this film was released to give us an insight how someone's life can turn upside down by crushes of cultures.