Review of Not Without My Daughter

First off, i'm a fan of Sally Fields and so I rented this to see what she was like in a film about Persians, my own background. To say the least, I was disappointed. The film was blatantly Iranophobic in most aspects. First off, to those 'morals police' (yeah the ugly fanatics with the machine gun) bring their truck around to nab at every opportunity some poor American woman whose bangs fall out of her scarf: what the hell? I think the gov't, in a state of war, would have better ways to allocate funds than to have crazy men and women driving around in morals trucks, fully armed, to tuck someone's hair in. Secondly, when they showed the young boys being kidnapped to fight in a war, and the Iranian man tells Betty that they'll be given "plastic keys to paradise, made in Taiwan", i don't even understand what that's supposed to signify. Children were never kidnapped and the plastic key bit made absolutely no sense. Perhaps they were trying to demean the sacrifices of the men and youth who fought in the war, which, need I remind us, was fought against Saddam Hussein (on the gallows presently), who was outright supported by the U.S. But, of course, that's never shown. I could write so much more but I think anyone who has seen it won't need any further explanations. Yes, it's a good story in the sense that international custody conflicts do happen, but the overacting was ridiculous, and the script even more so. Some say its not racist because 'there is no Iranian race', so its definitely anti-Iranian.

And about the Israeli comments; do you honestly not think there's an implicit bias in having a film about Islamic Iran filmed in Israel with Israeli actors? think how you'd feel if the Iranians made a film about a Muslim woman in Israel who has her son shot, filmed in Iran, portrayed by Iranian actors? don't you think there'd be a huge outcry of bias, unfairness, racism, and *gasp* anti-semitism? It's unfair both ways.