(And when she’s dressed in a robe, her head covered with a hood-like chador, we remember her Flying Nun habit.) When she’s confused, we think of her in Sybil. When Field acts strong and determined, we think of her in Norma Rae and Places in the Heart. But she comes off much better because we feel we know her from her other famous roles. That Alfred Molina (who played Joe Orton’s lover in Prick Up Your Ears) doesn’t make much sense of Moody isn’t really the actor’s fault.Īs Betty, Sally Field has pretty much the same problem. Moody, for example, really lives up to his name: He starts off as sympathetically as Danny Thomas in Make Room for Daddy and then quickly switches to Danny’s evil twin. The dialogue is efficient, the pacing is crisp, and the action is crystal clear.Ī movie in which the filmmakers sketch only the personalities of the central characters presents the actors with a tough job. But when it comes to building suspense as Betty arranges her escape from Iran, these guys aren’t half-bad. Rintels (TV’s Clarence Darrow and The Oldest Living Graduate) stay away from the central issues. Yes, director Brian Gilbert (Vice Versa) and screenwriter David W. Then, after a few days in Iran, Moody hits her with a big surprise: They’re not going back. But eventually she relents to please her husband. In Iran, it’s the Khomeini era (the mid-’80s), and Betty fears the Islamic state’s political climate. His family there has never seen the little girl and, after all, the visit would last only two weeks. Moody is pressuring his wife to let him take her and their daughter to Iran for a visit. If the title alone didn’t tell you that, the premise certainly would: Based on actual events, Not Without My Daughter is the story of an American woman who finds herself trapped in Iran.Īs the movie begins, Betty Mahmoody (Sally Field) is living in Michigan with her husband, an Iranian-born doctor named Moody (Alfred Molina), and their 4-year-old daughter, Mahtob (Sheila Rosenthal). Let’s begin by conceding that, on the face of it, Not Without My Daughter seems like the sort of shamelessly exploitative, torn-from-the-headlines movie that is usually “made for television.”
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