Enough film review

certificate_15

ENOUGH

It may be glib to say that Enough is aptly titled, but any time wasted in the company of this irritating nonsense is too much. Void of anything remotely redeeming or praiseworthy (unless seeing a lithe Jennifer Lopez whooping Bill Campbell counts), its strained plausibility is only exceeded by its clumsy execution. Director Michael Apted, best known for his absorbing documentary series 7 Up, is a strange choice to harness this turgid thriller about a battered wife wreaking revenge on her husband.

For a film that has at its core such a profound and identifiable issue, Enough's biggest fault is its failure to elicit any emotional resonance. None of the characters have any substance, but are instead crudely rendered vehicles for its dumb plot. It is hard to care about any of the people that inhabit screenwriter Nicholas Kazan's sterile environment, where the response of a wealthy and chauvinistic husband, Mitch (Bill Campbell), to being caught cheating by his wife, Slim (Jennifer Lopez), is to declare, "Today is the price you pay for having a good life." Any pity for her plight is quelled by disbelief that she was stupid enough to marry him in the first place.

How the ill-matched couple ever came to be wed is the only surprise provided by Enough. The feisty but jaded Slim is a waitress at a diner, where her colleague, Ginny (Juliette Lewis), constantly tries pairing her off with customers, when the husky-voiced and well-heeled Mitch and his friend Robbie (Noah Wyle) enter with their timeworn routine to get into her knickers. After a brief and unremarkable exchange, things inexplicably cut to Mitch and Slim's wedding, with nothing in the way of chemistry or a reason to suggest why they're together. The next cut finds them on the beach with their young daughter Gracie (Tessa Allen). Given that Slim went from taking Mitch's order to being the mother of his 4 year-old girl in seconds, it's hardly surprising she didn't know what he was really like. She finds out all too abruptly though when he starts beating after his infidelities prompt her to want to leave.

From this unpromising start, things get worse as Slim takes Gracie and goes on the run, moving from city to city, changing identity in an effort to escape from Mitch and the violent means he employs to get her back. It's only when she realises that he will never stop coming after her that she decides to switch tactics and go after him.