Sadly Over-hyped

Best movie of this year hands down!

An Exercise In Nonsense

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Five Miles To Midnight is another of those Alfred Hitchcock type films that could have been a classic had he decided to do them. I think he was busy with The Birds when this came out.Sophia Loren is the star both in billing and performance. She's married to former American GI Anthony Perkins and it's an abusive relationship. Perkins has to take a flight to Casablanca, but the plane crashes near Bordeaux and miracle of miracles he survives but is not found.What a golden opportunity for a little insurance fraud. And a battered Sophia goes along with it. The rest of the film is the masquerade that Loren plays as she pretends he's dead like everyone suspects and what she endures with an increasingly unbalanced Perkins.When Sophia Loren won her Oscar for Two Women she showed her acting chops and this film also has a lot more to do with Sophia the actress than Sophia the sex symbol. As for Anthony Perkins he started out playing callow youths with issues. After Psycho he started out playing far more deranged characters with issues although his character here is descending into a bit of madness unlike Norman Bates who was one fully formed whack job.Other men in Sophia's life are Gig Young and Jean-Pierre Aumont. Won't give any ending away because in the end we don't know what's to become of the main characters most especially Sophia Loren.

The evocative opening scene of Five Miles Before Midnight held promise. I anticipated a moody piece of film noir with an intriguing female lead rather than the usual male. I was also hoping for more of Jean Pierre Aumont, who distinguishes any film he's in, but his role was little more than a cameo. However Sophia Loren, though lovely to look at, does not yet have the dramatic punch to carry off this role, or perhaps she only required better direction. There was ambiguity suggested about how faithful she was to husband Tony Perkins and this could have been put over nicely with a more well seasoned performance. Perhaps it was simply their pairing together--I didn't think they possessed any chemistry. It's hard to believe she ever found anything attractive about Perkins well established immaturity. What woman would? In any case, she doesn't breathe enough life into her character of put-upon housewife and near the film's conclusion, she goes overboard in a frankly unbelievable personality transformation. Also, the "surprise" ending was no surprise to this reviewer, who wonders why she didn't see the obvious way out of her troubles much earlier. It is however, an entirely watchable film and one of those that you kind of like to poke fun at. Certainly there are worse films out there!

You would think that any thriller beginning with Sophia Loren doing the Twist in a Paris nightclub couldn't be all bad! Unfortunately, the plot mechanisms (and red herrings) of "Five Miles to Midnight" nearly defeat Loren, very good as the put-upon wife of a neurotic who has sneakily walked away from a plane crash, hoping to collect on his flight insurance worth $120,000. Anthony Perkins, more nervous and fey than ever, continually bites his fingernail, his face twitching in possessive jealousy, while we in the audience wait in agony for Loren to come to her senses and put him out of his misery. It's hard to determine which element of the picture is more inappropriate: Perkins' icky Norman Bates-isms, Gig Young's leering, Cheshire Cat-like performance as an ex-detective-turned-newspaper man, or Mikis Theodorakis' insanely 'Parisienne' background music. ** from ****

I just love this movie. It has suspense and a little comedy(even though the film makers may not have intended for there to be). Anthony Perkins was just great as the childish, nightmarish husband of Sophia Loren.Lisa (played by the ever exasperating Sophia Loren) has tired of her immature, infantile husband, Bob (played by the always great Tony Perkins). Well, when Bob travels to Casablanca via plane and Lisa sees in the newspaper that it crashed with no survivors, she's relieved. But guess what? Unfortunately for her (but fortunately for us Tony fans), Bob didn't die! Well, Bob comes back to Lisa unbeknownst to anyone else and bullies Lisa into collecting the insurance money.Overall this is just a great film (even if Sophia is in it). The ending is a shocker, too.One more thing, listen to the film's music; it's really good, too.