Synopsis
An American woman, trapped in Islamic Iran by her brutish husband, must find a way to escape with her daughter as well.
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Cast
- Sally FieldBetty Mahmoody
- Alfred MolinaMoody
- Sheila RosenthalMahtob
- Roshan SethHoussein
- Sarah BadelNicole
- Mony-ReyAmeh Bozorg
- Georges CorrafaceMohsen
- Mary Nell SantacroceGrandma
- Ed GradyGrandpa
- Marc GowanDoctor
Recommendations
- 88
The Associated Press
Central to the effectiveness of the film is the performance of Sally Field as Betty. She is magnificent. No star is more proficient at portraying the American woman beset by woes not of her own making. In her unadorned face are reflected the compassion, the sense of betrayal, the suffering, the maternal love and the gumption to escape her bondage. [07 Jan 1991] - 88
Boston Globe
Not Without My Daughter creeps up on you like an icy chill. Not since Midnight Express in 1978 has imprisonment in a foreign country been so alarmingly and intimately conveyed on film. [11 Jan 1991, p.69] - 75
Chicago Sun-Times
Here is a perplexing and frustrating film, which works with great skill to involve our emotions, while at the same time making moral and racial assertions that are deeply troubling. - 70
Variety
Sally Field has the stage to herself to engage the audience’s sympathy, and this she does with an earnest, suitably emotional performance as a rather typically sincere, middle-class American. - 60
Washington Post
This real-life case of Misery sets your teeth on edge, your blood boiling, your adrenaline surging with the subtlety of a World War II propaganda film. - 50
Chicago Tribune
It is Field's bursting, big-eyed American-ness - a commodity she has carefully banked since her days as TV's "Gidget" - that generates the film's lurid fascination. [11 Jan 1991, p.K] - 40
Empire
While not wishing to be facetious about women and children held against their will in any country, this tearjerker is strictly TV movie for a wet Wednesday stuff. - 40
TV Guide Magazine
By enlisting jingoism and reducing an entire culture to caricature, Not Without My Daughter defeats any progressive point it may have intended to make.
