Wonderful character development!

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Sleeping With The Enemy is one of the best atmospheric thrillers of the early 90's. Anyone who checks it out thinking they'll get a serious, thought provoking look at domestic abuse should think again. It's more of a dark, impressionistic fairytale than anything else, with logic giving way to a nightmarish chase piece. Julia Roberts plays Laura, a naive young bride to Martin (Patrick Bergin), a wealthy advertisement executive who adores her and gives her everything she wants. Unfortunately part of that package involves him kicking the living crap out of her at the drop of a hat. The early scenes have a nerve wracking sense of awaiting disaster, and indeed when things get really bad, Laura escapes by the skin of her teeth, travels by night to a small town in a distant corner of the country, and attempts to start anew. Martin, big bad wolf that he is, pursues her in selfish psychopathic rage, leading to a tense, wicked showdown. This is a misunderstood film. It's not meant as a serious minded piece, but rather an allegory for the way humans prey on one another, relatable to the dark storybooks of our childhood, but manifested in a very adult, mature setting. It's set almost like a horror film, with an ominous score, moody, gaunt locations and an ambiance that sets it just outside reality. Roberts is equal parts resilient and vulnerable as a damsel in distress who ends up rescuing herself, which is as good a character arc as any. Bergin owns, with a towering portrayal of tyrannical, senseless evil. He stalks the film's gorgeous cinematography with a virile madness and relentless sadism that seems one dimensional, until you accept that he isn't meant to be a fleshed out human, but rather an archetype of the bad that human beings are capable of. Crackling thriller.

Julia Roberts is great in Pretty Woman and Steel Magnolias.In this film,she plays Laura,a wife who finds herself tied to Martin(Patrick Bergin) a wife-beater;Martin is controlling,and Laura only sees his behavior worsening.The drama unfolds,when they're on a friend's boat. Laura uses the storm to escape her misfortune.Martin gets a call from a friend,who suddenly makes him realize he was lied to.Laura moves away and relaxes after a time.She then meets a sweet friend who helps her get over the misery. Martin goes to the university and checks out a friend of Laura's.When he learns of her location,Martin hunts her down; Laura then realizes things "mysteriously" change position and the pace moves faster.The ending comes,when the two are by the stairway.Laura finally finds the guts to shoot her stalker dead.

I'm not a fan of Julia Roberts (or Patrick Bergin, for that matter) and watching this film again after some years reminded me why. To be fair, it was still quite early on in Robert's career, and it's obvious that she was still trying to find her place in Hollywood and a foothold as an actor.Sleeping With The Enemy is a very good film, with what has to be one of Bergin's strongest performances. A somewhat underrated actor, he carries much of the film alone. His performance of the abusive, controlling and manipulative husband is very believable. He really does come across as a genuinely evil character. Julia Robert's performance lacks confidence, so consequently she is just dithering along for most of the film, and Kevin Anderson doesn't really deserve a mention. In fact, you could take out Anderson's part/ character and it wouldn't really affect the film.On a whole Sleeping With The Enemy is well worth watching; it's from a time when Hollywood was still trying to come up with something good (on occasion). Yes, there are holes, it's predictable and it may not be all that realistic, but it's very well acted, scripted, shot and even has a great, memorable score.What more could you want?

Sleeping With the Enemy feels nothing so much as a Lifetime drama/thriller that was lucky enough to scoop up mainstream distribution into American cinemas. It's a perfunctory, often middling cross between the two genres, as it starts out giving us an interesting setup with characters and a dysfunctional relationship, before abandoning that to predicate upon a cat-and-mouse game between the couple. If it hadn't been for the interesting amount of tension director Joseph Ruben cooks up during this ninety-eight minute exercise, this review would be comprised of battle-words.The film's selling point is obviously Julia Roberts, who does what the script allows her to do efficiently. She plays Laura Burney, a relatively middle-aged woman living off the coast of Cape Cod with her husband Martin (Patrick Bergin) in a seemingly competent life-position. They talk a lot, they appear to be trusting, and they enjoy having sex in the dining room to Symphony Fantastique. Not long after their fling do we see why their relationship isn't so great; Martin, who suffers from a personality disorder, often abuses Laura if she does not perform tasks to his personal liking or if he assumes that she is being unfaithful. This causes a desperate strain on not only their relationship, but Laura's well-being. When the neighbor offers to take them sailing in a wild thunderstorm, Laura decides to fake her own death at sea and swim to a nearby shore. On the shore, she can begin a new life, under the name "Sara Waters," and leave the calamity behind her."Sara" soon meets a drama professor named Ben Woodward (Kevin Anderson), who tries to become close with her, but coming off a disastrous marriage, she wants nothing to do with men anymore. The remainder of the film showcases Ben's efforts to get closer to "Sara," and how Martin begins to pick up leads to her whereabouts where he can finally make her his own again.This kind of potboiler setup doesn't leave too much to be desired. The film has a very "scenic" attitude, meaning that much of the film is comprised of listless montages, pretty, yes, but substantial and worthy of inclusion, no. This makes the film inhabit a dreary state, where the characters are not that interesting to stay in-tune with, the plot is nothing but a simple kickstarter to get things going, and the relationships between characters are wholly unmemorable.Yet the most astonishing thing of all, setting aside the scenic atmosphere, the uninteresting characters, the tepid plot progression, and the redundancy of it all is the hammy acting by almost everyone involved. Even Roberts, who is often quaint and sophisticated in her roles. She recites her dialog with a wooden state of mind, seemingly reading it off a cue-card, making much of her delivery awkward and unpolished. Anderson and Bergin don't bring too much else to the table, other than the males in her life that are causing her untold grief.There is, however, a similarity to a newer movie that Sleeping With the Enemy brings to the table, and that film is Safe Haven, the latest adaptation in the line of Nicolas Sparks romance novels. Both of these films, while capitalizing off the same-type of premise, choose to go about their stories in different ways. Sleeping With the Enemy tries to craft a thriller out of the entire thing, providing a more nuanced relationship subplot in the background, while Safe Haven heavily emphasizes the romance value and only seeks out the thriller aspect towards the end of the film. Regardless, these are two examples of films with a promising premise that both provide hokey, unremarkable products in whatever direction they take. Despite this, both films provide competent direction and accentuate a usually difficult detail to capture well (Safe Haven being scenery, and this film being suspense). It's just too bad the surrounding elements in the same picture couldn't have buoyed it.Starring: Julia Roberts, Patrick Bergin, and Kevin Anderson. Directed by: Joseph Ruben.