Husband-beating rarely makes the headlines, so anyone seeking to depict it on screen is immediately faced with a plausibility problem. Unfortunately, Harry Winer comes nowhere near to meeting the challenge with this clumsy TV movie. Judith Light overacts so blatantly that it's unlikely anyone (let alone a trained policeman) would believe she was the victim of the infeasibly passive Peter Strauss. Yet, he's the one who is charged with assault after defending himself from another tirade. Domestic violence leaves terrifying scars, but here it's merely an excuse for narrative corner-cutting and bargain-basement pop psychology.

This movie shows another side to spousal abuse that not too many people thought is possible--the husband being abused and the wife the abuser.