UnowPriceless hyped garbage

Steineded How sad is this?

PiraBit if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Caryl It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties. It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

jbsreading I love this movie because it's about a brave mother risking her life to save her daughter. Where it takes place and who the foes are is secondary to me. Just as "The Handmaid's Tale" shows the dangers of a fundamentalist Old Testament Christian society where women have no rights, "Not Without My Daughter" tells of a similar society that happened to actually exist in Iran when this real life story took place. Imagine leaving your comfortable rights-filled home and being thrust into a country where your gender has zero rights, and to boot, you don't know the language and are totally unfamiliar with the culture or language, or religion. Oh, and you and your daughter are prisoners. This is Betty's own, personal, terrifying story. She encountered people who were hostile and seemed scary, or who were at least afraid to communicate with or help her. She was in a small, foreign environment. Hopefully people are intelligent enough not to make assumptions about an entire country of people but we also shouldn't ask a survivor to alter her terrorizing experience because we find it offensive. It IS scary that women and girls had no rights in Iran and that were prisoners. Of course, Americans in this situation would experience this very, very differently than those girls born there into loving families or who visited at a kinder and gentler time in Iran's history. Let's honor this heroic woman and her daughter, their story, while understanding that someone else could have an entirely different story and perspective coming out of Iran or any other Muslim country.

estebangonzalez10 "I don't know how to say this to you. We're not going back. We're staying here."Not Without My Daughter is basically a family drama that focuses on spouses from two very different cultures that clash together. Sally Field plays Betty, an American woman who has been happily married in the States with her Iranian husband, Moody (played by Alfred Molina). The two have a beautiful young daughter played by Sheila Rosenthal. The film takes place in the 80's when tension between America and Iran began escalating, and in a way it begins to take a toll on Betty's marriage. Moody gets bullied a lot at the hospital where he works due to his Iranian background and he eventually ends up losing his job. He convinces Betty to come along with him to Iran to visit his family and that is where the tension escalates because Moody's intentions are to stay in Iran. The Iranian culture is very patriarchal so Betty can't return to the States with her daughter and ends up being held against her will in a country that seems to despise her. Moody who seemed to be a loving husband, goes through a drastic change when he arrives at Iran and begins abusing his wife and forcing her to stay against her will. The film then centers on Betty's attempt to find a way out of her current situation. Sally Field and Alfred Molina are talented actors, but I fear the material they had to work with was very weak. These characters are stereotypes of how we perceive Iranians to be and I'm afraid the characters are never given distinct personalities other than portraying the Iranians as bad people. I just found the story a bit too lazy and predictable because it was full of clichés. The film plays out exactly the way you are expecting it to.

TBJCSKCNRRQTreviews When Betty(Field, determined) go with Moody(Molina, transforming from loving to cruel) and their daughter Mahtob(Rosenthal, cute, devoted to her mother) back to his home country of Iran for a two week vacation, they find it very different from last time he was there. Since the revolution, the laws are more strict. And when the fortnight is up, he tells them that they will be staying. It's a dangerous place to be, women have few rights, and a divorce would just mean he gets custody. But she knows she has to get out, and her girl is coming with her. One way or another.I don't know enough about the period to say how realistic this is, but it comes across as credible. We see some of the local customs, and the choice to keep it entirely from their perspective was smart - as long as they are in that country, so are we. The acting is good for all concerned, including children. Some of the dialog and cinematography are odd, taking you out of the experience, when they easily could have been better. Other than that, this is fairly well-produced. This is 108 minutes without the credits, or 111 with.There is some solid tension, albeit these sequences tend to be over too quickly, and removed from any greater context. The pacing is decent at best. This stops and stalls, and it's one of the "based on a true story" pictures that focuses so much on being accurate, it forgets that it's also, ultimately a piece of fiction(not a documentary), and as such, has to entertain. There are plot strands that end up going nowhere, and this is easily 20 minutes too long. By the end, you've simply stopped caring.There is some violent and disturbing content. I recommend this to those who badly want a film about these events. 6/10

Hamed Mashayekhi I have never written anything for any movie because both my English and my knowledge about cinema are not good enough. However, last night after watching this movie I decided to write my idea about it. I am an atheist and I hate the Islamic Regime in Iran. I am also by no means a nationalist. But after watching this movie I was so angry that had to walk a few minutes to cool down. The Iranian society even today has lots of problems. In 1980s after the Islamic Revolution the situation was much worse. But the situation pictured in this movie is so exaggerated that you can't believe it is just a misunderstanding about Iran. This movie has certainly been made for a political purpose. Anybody who has been to Iran even for a few hours will agree with me. There are lots of things I can mention here that are not (and have never been) true about Iran and you can see them in this movie. For example in this movie all Iranian women are wearing chador (a kind of Islamic cover). There are lots of women in Iran without chador who use scarves to cover their hair and they don't even cover it completely as was shown in this movie. There are a few cases of asking women to cover their hair and it is never done as it is shown in this movie. They are often asked politely to cover their hair. The other point about chador is that it is not common for Iranian women to wear it at home and they definitely don't wear black chadors for praying at home. In this movie all women are wearing chador, even at home and even when they are praying. It was obviously tried to show everything about Iran dirty, ugly, primitive and savage. The houses and streets are dirty and destroyed, the women are ugly (which is actually the opposite!), men act like wild animals, etc. There are pictures of Khomeini and the logo of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards everywhere (even inside the house!). No woman wears make up. And I have no idea why there are soldiers and military cars in the streets! If you haven't been to Iran, please do not believe what you see in this movie. Although the Islamic regime is not what most of us want in Iran, it has never made our country as it is shown in this movie.