Critic Reviews

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]

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]

While careful not to denounce the religion, the film fires a powerful broadside at fundamentalist Islam in general and revolutionary Iran in particular. [11 Jan 1991]

Not Without emerges as a remarkably compelling, timely biographical melodrama about as painful a case of sexual and marital betrayal as one can imagine.

Field captures the sense of outrage to perfection, puffy-eyed, screaming and plotting escape. Appropriately enough, the film is strictly deglamorised; combined with the lack of sympathetic characters, it all adds up to difficult, compelling viewing as we're drawn into the deepening nightmare.

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.

Field is at her best, downtrodden and determined as ever, and Sheila Rosenthal as Mahtob, Betty and Moody's little daughter, is adorable. [11 Jan 1991, p.E1]

By film's end, the husband's reasons and rationalizations seem all but incomprehensible. That doesn't, however, prevent this from being a thoroughly engrossing tale. [11 Jan 1991, p.24]

Not Without My Daughter, based on the true story of Betty Mahmoody, presents a strong picture of the struggle of a mother and daughter trying to leave Iran together. The film succeeds very well in creating suspense over their situation without coating it with undue sentimentality. [12 Jan 1991, p.5D]

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.