Presumably, as Executive Producer, Michele Lee has strong feelings about the subject of this made-for-TV movie on domestic abuse, which highlights a "make-my-day" self-preservation statute and the police review of domestic violence protocol. It's just a pity that she cast herself in the main role. Based on the true story of Gary and Jessica Cochran from Glen Oaks, this is the tale of a husband as abuser and wife (and her children) as victim.
The teleplay by Cindy Myers doesn't provide much backstory. The treatment begins with the Cochran's moving into a new house, after we are told 15 years of marriage. Gary (James Farentino) is long-term unemployed, and Jessica (Lee) works at 2 part time jobs, at a bakery and diner. At one point Gary says that he won't go back to jail, though we aren't told why he was there before or for how long. Gary's past seems to be of some importance for our understanding of him. All we get is his talk of feeling empty and alone as a child, and that being with Jessica makes him "one person", and that he beats her because they become "too close".
Myer thankfully shows an escalation of Gary's anger, so that he is not presented as unreasonable from the start (I had no problems with his dislike of smoking and alcohol, for example), but the issue of his make-my-day killing of a neighbour is a plot point that is left unresolved, and he does not bother to defend himself when Jessica applies for a restraining order. Jessica is provided with an employer Walter (John Spencer) as an alternate romantic interest, and a co-worker Lee (Lee Garlington) who leads her to a "underground" women's shelter, though Myers saves her trump card for the end. Two interesting touches are a scene where Gary tries to teach his son Peter (Damion Stevens) how to fight, and Jessica's redemptive sexual attraction to Gary, whereby his "anger" transforms into lovemaking skill.
Myers has Gary and Jessica give to-camera confessionals, where they both use the expression "anyways", and cliches like "walking on razorblades", "You made your bed, now you have to sleep in it", and Jessica considering herself a "hostage". We get the standard "If you hit me again, I'll leave you. If you leave me, I'll kill you" rhetoric of the genre, but also one funny line. When Jessica is asked how dangerous Gary is on a scale from 1 to 10, 10 being lethal, she replies 11.
Director Armand Mastroianni plays with the confessionals, cutting from Gary's "There was nothing I could do" and "Stop it" to the same lines from Jessica, and we only get visual cliches like slow motion for a shooting in the climax. Mastroianni also dissolves from a smiley face drawing by Peter to a close-up of Gary, and has Jessica look beyond a over-the-shoulder reaction shot to watch Gary when she is being police interviewed. However a swat team that arrives in the face of Gary's violation of the restraining order is ludicrous. Mastroianni repeatedly uses invasive close-ups of Gary to make him look monstrous, however does the same for a kiss between Jessica and Walter to also show its awkwardness.
In spite of the treatment's bias, Farentino (who was married to Lee at the time of filming!) makes Gary more pitiable than Jessica. Lee tends to pull faces, though she does provide some animal noises of fear when she goes to bed with Gary against her will.
