Shameful Secrets

This could have been a great movie if I didn't have to mute it and turn the captions on because the piano was just way too much! More than half of the movie had the same piano tune in the background and it did not go with what was going on in the movie whatsoever. I started to wonder if the movie was glitched until I read another review that mentioned the same thing.

It definitely is a typical lifetime movie and hard to really connect with the characters since they really didn't go into detail with them much at all. The boy was wonderful and probably the one that was easiest to sympathize with.

Abusive, black-hearted husband is the bad guy, and the loving mother is wronged by the unfeeling court system. However, AMAZING performance by Justin Isfeld as Jason, the son. Truly a wonderful performance for a child actor so young.

Effective movie where a battered woman takes her kids and runs. Joanna Kerns is good. The abusive husband played by Tim Mathison is 100% bad repeatedly abusive and kicks her out and more. She moves to a shelter and the judge gives custody to the bad dad. There seems to be little recourse for her. One problem with this movie is how can everything in the system go against her? At the crux of this movie is that the judge can't take account spousal abuse in custody hearings.

When her boy starts get abused she realises she needs to run with the kids.

Worth a watch but it's quite fraught with emotion.

I suspect that the people who dislike the film may struggle with emotional issues. This film was moving, Joanne and Matthew were extremely convincing, and the young boy who played the son has to be one of the best child actors I've ever seen. The battered woman and child story is one that needs to be told over and over again so that people can understand how traumatic and horrific abuse is. This story was extremely effective, and a lifetime original.. lifetime used to make movies like this, and I wish they would move back to these types of stories, gripping, moving, and validating. This was a heart-wrenching, beautiful movie.

This film has two names, the one I viewed was "Going Underground" which is a better title for this type of film about a very happy looking married couple with two children. However, once the front door is shut the husband turns into another person and thinks he is in the boxing ring with his wife, who has no defense except to take all the right and left shots to the jaw. Joanna Kerns,(Maryann Walker-Tate) gave an outstanding performance through out the entire picture as the wife who struggles to keep her children and try to change the laws about abused women in the United States. Tim Matheson, (Daniel) gave a great supporting role as the most shameful husband/father you would ever want to know. This subject always needs to be told, because unfortunately women are still having to face this horrible brutality.