Product Description

This edge-of-your-seat thriller stars sexy Halle Berry (X-MEN, MONSTER'S BALL, DIE ANOTHER DAY) as a beautiful woman hopelessly trapped in a web of suspense and terror where nothing is what it seems! Josie Potenza (Berry) has it all: a fabulous home, a life of privilege, and a wealthy husband. But Josie's seemingly perfect life takes a nightmarish turn when her husband is brutally murdered -- making her the prime suspect in the police investigation ... and the prime target of a psychotic blackmailing killer! Featuring Christopher McDonald (SPY KIDS(TM) 2) and Peter Greene (THE USUAL SUSPECTS) in an outstanding cast, THE RICH MAN'S WIFE is riveting entertainment that delivers heart-stopping suspense!

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #22959 in DVD
• Brand: Disney
• Released on: 2000-04-11
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 94 minutes

Amazon.com
One of Halle Berry's first star vehicles, The Rich Man's Wife has a quirky, unearned twist for an ending, but everything else is pretty obvious. So obvious, it's possible to review it like this:

See Halle.
Halle is a wife.
See Halle's husband.
The husband is mean.
See the barfly.
Halle tells the barfly how she feels.
The barfly is not well.
The barfly kills Halle's husband.
The barfly tricks Halle.
Extort. Extort. Extort.
Halle has to run.
Halle has to fight.
Halle has to carry this movie.
Act, Halle! Act!
Halle has no help.
Plot, people! Plot!

And, no, even though it's rated R, she keeps her clothes on. -- Keith Simanton

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Customer Reviews

Not a classic, but certainly entertaining
Put together a young and beautiful wife, an older, very rich husband, the obnoxious restaurant owner who is enjoying the cheating young wife, and one completely psychotic killer. Mix all that together and you have a highly entertaining suspense film.

The killer murders the rich husband then blackmails the young wife - the police will never believe you, he says. I'll tell them you hired me to kill your husband. He tells her she needs to pay him off or she goes to jail. It certainly seems like an airtight plan. You find yourself thinking, how is she going to get herself out of this one? Then the movie takes you through hair-raising suspense until it's conclusion.

The acting in this movie wasn't all that great and the ending was fairly predictable, even with the twist at the end. Still, this was an enjoyable movie. Rent, don't buy.

Gold digger's fable
This forgettable film can be summed up in four lines:

When marrying for money
Expensive clothes and cars
It's better not to bare your heart
To creepy guys in bars

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Why you should watch this movie:
1. Halle Berry
2. A very young Clive Owen

Why you should skip this movie:
1. Horrible plot
2. Holes in aforementioned horrible plot
3. You need ANOTHER reason?

Rated: 2.5 stars


Amanda Richards, November 5, 2007

Split in two
"The Rich Man's Wife" has potential, it really does, but it turns out to be too much like the plot of something you'd watch on LIFETIME (a network that claims to be good for women, but continually features tortured females running from bad men.) How many times can you tell the same cliched story before it bores you to tears? The pluses in this film are Halle Berry, Clea Lewis and the cinematography. There are too many cons to list here.

The "big" plot twist (and this was right after THE USUAL SUSPECTS and a few years before plot twists became all the rage) is ludicrous after it follows ninety minutes of a flashback that is nothing more than mixed-up foreshadowing. No matter what context you place the "this is what happened" in, it still does not connect well with the ending. The ending appears to have been slapped on at the last minute. "Hey," the writers must have thought, "let's throw in a completely misplaced plot twist." Unlike MULHOLLAND DRIVE (a wonderfully complex film), the fact that this film does not make sense is due to poor writing, NOT a great abstract mind as in the case of David Lynch.

In reference to a previous reviewer who seemed disturbed that a black man (who was unjustly accused of the murder) rightfully sought justice: this aspect of the film was one of the few times it broke tradition and tried to become a meaningful film. Racial profiling, unfortunately, is something that still happens in a police department and Detective Lewis was more than justified in pointing out his colleague's racist tendencies.

Every time the film started to go somewhere that could have made it a strong film (exploring the volatie relationship of marriage, the horrible impact of racism on someone's life, infidelity) it suddenly turned back into a cheesy Lifetime movie.