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All-Reviews.com Movie/Video Review
Enough
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  out of 4
| *Also starring: | Bill Campbell, Tessa Allen, Juliette Lewis, Dan Futterman, Chris Maher, Noah Wyle, Ruben Madera |
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 Review by Harvey Karten 3 stars out of 4
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During the nineties a popular t-shirt sound-bite was "Die
Yuppie Scum," but I don't think that was meant to hurt ordinary
young, urban professionals. After all, what's wrong with being
urban and professional and there's certainly nothing wrong with
being young. The slogan, I'd guess, was directed against
bright-faced people not too many years out of college or law
school or graduate business school who were making more
money than they deserved and who thought that they thereby
owned the world. They could do what they want, order people
around, flash their Beamer and plastic and buy anyone. The
bad guy in Michael Apted's "Enough" is just that sort of
character, a man who owned a highly successful construction
company, had a trio of thugs as retainers, and a rogue L.A. cop
(Noah Wyle) to do some of his real dirty work. The guy's name
is Mitch (Bill Campbell), and because he's strikingly tall,
handsome, rich, smooth and fairly young, he figured he could
have the kind of family he wanted good looking wife, cute
kid and still play around on the side. This is bad news but not
something that deserves the kind of comeuppance that
everyone in the audience knew he would get. The real issue
here is that when his pretty wife Slim (Jennifer Lopez) took off
with their daughter Gracie (Tessa Allen) after being slapped
around and punched, he stalked her wherever she went. He not
only stalked but had his rogue cop trace her phone calls and in
one case attempt to run her off the road to her death.
"Enough" would be a testosterone picture if Apted, using
Nicholas Kazan's screenplay (photographed brightly and crisply
by Rogie Stoffers in L.A., San Francisco and parts of Southern
Cal), relied in the usual men vs. men scenes, but since
"Enough" deals with a woman's justifiable revenge on a guy out
to kill her, I suppose we could call this an estrogen movie.
Apted knows how to get the audience hearts pumping, even
despite our knowing how everything will turn out, and employs
one twist that only the most clever among the viewers would
have anticipated.
Apted also uses a cute technique, not unlike that used by
playwright Berthold Brecht in a concept known to theater-lovers
as alienation, to tell the audience what's about to happen. For
example, we see the words "How they met" flash quickly and
then we watch how Slim and Mitch meet cute in a coffee shop.
When the words "The conquering hero" hit the screen, we see
the seemingly ideal husband Mitch buy a house on the spot
from an elderly gentleman for way over market price, telling the
resident, "Your kids are grown. You'd be happier in a smaller
place." The trouble starts when Slim discovers that her prince
has some princesses on the side and is not willing to play the
game in order to live the good material life in California.
Confronting the guy, she's punched, runs away, and is barely a
step ahead of Mitch's network of shady friends. Luckily for Slim
she has her own network including a rich father (Fred Ward)
who had never before acknowledged his paternity, a generous
ex-boyfriend (Dan Futterman), and a clever, man-hunting fellow-
waitress (Juliette Lewis) to counteract the rich man's pals.
Luckily as well, Slim manages to get the money to take a crash
course in self defense, becoming the equivalent of a 5th degree
black-belt in less than a month (or so it seems). I wish that
Apted would have given credit where credit is due: the
technique she learns, one which some of the women in the
audience would probably want to look into, is a system taught
mostly to women in the Israeli army to fight against those who
are stronger than they. It's called Krav Maga (accept on the last
syllable), and provides for us the satisfactory closure to a well-
acted work featuring a handsome villain who reminds me
somewhat of a young Anthony Perkins--and a photogenic little
girl. I don't have to tell you that J. Lo looks terrif.
Copyright © 2002 Harvey Karten
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