Review of movie "Enough"



The movie Enough came out in 2002 and I remembered it as being decent but reviewing it the second time I wonder what I saw in it the first time. This was a bad movie.

Jennifer Lopez's character Slim meets and falls in love with a conniving, two timing, lying abuser. He is a strong willed, charismatic personality that is used to getting his way. The abuse starts when Slim finds out about an affair that he is having and confronts him. He slaps her and when she says You can't hit me, he hits her. She makes plans to leave, and he catches her and beats her worse. Eventually with the help of her friends she makes it out of the house. From there, it is a stalker plot line where he finds out where she is and she's desperate and doesn't know what to. She ends up going to a long lost father who is a powerful something or other and gives her money and a trainer.  Then there is a 10 minute montage of her training in what looks like Krav Maga in anticipation of an upcoming family court cases.
We learn during the movie the husband has a friend in the police department who is running addresses and credit card monitoring to help him keep track of her. A lawyer advisers her the family court case is simply a ruse to get her to show herself publicly and from there will try to tail and track her.
She trains for about a month and decides to kill her husband by setting him up. She breaks into his house by picking the locks, sets up a cell phone blocker, puts on rings as brass knuckles, hides his guns, plants fake letters and is ready to go.
So the husband comes home, there is some back and forth banter and the fight is on. She hits him and kicks him and knocks him out using her superior fighting skills but doesn't have the will to actually kill him. The fight continues and she ends up kicking him over a balcony where he falls to his death.
Here are the issues  I have with the movie and some comments:
1. The domestic violence just seems to pop up out of nowhere with the discovery of the affair. The truth is that domestic abuse is often times there from the beginning of the relationship and grows continually worse. It is progressive bu this movie doesn't show that.
2. She has a strong support system with her friends and the long lost dad who saves the day with the money and trainer. Most DV don't have that support.
3. Slim says emphatically, I'm not going to a shelter yet cries when she has no support, money or legal avenues. DV programs are there for her situation !
4. She becomes somewhat of a badass in 30 days. Training in hand to hand stuff, lock picking, and attitudes yet during the training montage they never show her sparring or getting hit, just training. Sorry, not realistic.
5. I did like that the movie showed many aspects of DV abuse situations where the husbands says things like " I make the money, I make the rules. " and  " You want to fight? I'm a man, its not contest." It clearly shows him controlling and possessive.  He also controls the money freezing her out of her accounts. It shows him using his daughter as a weapon in the fight.
6. The movie portrays her decision to take his life as rather mechanical and pretty unconflicted when she has no experience with combat, fighting, warrior philosophy, etc.

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