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Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.

Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Jenni Devyn Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

pipsycaldwell I was a member of a Baptists church for over 2 years. The Pastor's Wife portrays a fairly accurate account of the women in my church who firmly believe that the men in the family have the final say. The wedding vows too are fairly accurate in as much as the 'love, honour and obey' that were originally 'standard' vows. The pastor (or minister) in my church, although young was not (to my knowledge) violent, nor abusive. However he had little or no knowledge of domestic abuse as he had been raised in a non-violent atmosphere. His views were outdated though, because he constantly informed me that no matter how I was treated (or ill-treated), my role as wife was to be submissive, understanding and non-judgemental. My ex treated me okay (in public) behind closed doors, I too was subjected to verbal abuse both by him and his parents. The minister in my church did inform me that if I chose to 'abandon' the marriage, I too would be ostracized by the church. I chose to leave and (as promised) was ostracized.

evening1 This film excels at conjuring the ambiguity in a troubling case.As the movie tells it, Mary Winkler shot her husband in the back after he would not help her out of a financial mess that he gotten her into. Mary had had about enough of a man who'd beaten and abused her sexually, but, as Selmer, Tenn.'s upstanding pastor, was expert at hiding all that.Rose McGowan, though far more glamorous than the real-life mother of three at the heart of the story, does well as a timid woman who doesn't even believe she deserves a defense. Michael Shanks has a small role as her husband but is believable.Since Mary was the sole witness to so much of what she claims to have endured, we, her lawyer, her jury, and her community must base our judgments on her version alone. As the film tells it, Mary's oldest daughter, about 12 at the time of the killing, remains a voice of skepticism. The scene in which she challenges her mother as to why they were not calling the police is powerful and really gets one thinking.The movie's final scene is a little chilling. Has Mary changed since serving a short term in jail and returning to everyday life in her quiet town? Or was she always that way? In all, this was very well done.

phd_travel This true life case appeared in the news a lot - Mary Winkler a young mother of 3 daughters shot and killed her seemingly kind loving pastor husband in the back in bed. She claimed abuse. She got a very short sentence. This puzzling case captured a lot of attention.Rose McGowan is convincing as the enigmatic Mary. She looks shell shocked and is quite appropriately spaced out. The blank stare looks a lot like what we have seen on the news.It's quite well done how they show the public witnessed version of events first and then gradually the alleged private version where the abuse took place.The murdered pastor Matthew Winkler is played by Michael Shanks who gives quite a convincing performance especially explosive in the alleged abuse situation.Leaves one with an unsettled feeling whether the abuse actually took place and he was a perverted abuser or she got too lightly away with murdering him in a huge miscarriage of justice.

mgconlan-1 I'm still not sure what to think of this one. It's trying really hard to be more than just another Lifetime movie about either a crazy woman who knocked off her husband or a male S.O.B. who got what he deserved when his wife shot him. The film has a lot of good aspects, notably the way it establishes how the authoritarian beliefs of the Church of Christ conditioned the events -- how the husband could literally believe his wife should submit to him and meekly accept him even when he hit her for trivial reasons, and also why his dark side would reveal itself in surfing for porn on the Net and ultimately in making his wife dress like a hooker before he could have sex with her (all those religious hang-ups about sex being only to make babies, not to have fun!). I also liked little bits like the woman prosecutor saying, when she receives notice that the wife and her attorney are going to present spousal abuse as a defense, "I wonder what took them so long." (Since the movie is already more than half over before this happens, I wonder what took screenwriter Robert Freedman and director Norma Bailey that long, too!) At the same time, there are just too many lapses into familiar Lifetime clichés for this to work as the atmospheric neo-noir it was clearly meant to be, and Rose McGowan simply looks too young to have been married for 13 years and have three children, the oldest a teenager. (Then again they may have wanted a young-looking actress because Freedman's script contains a lot of flashbacks to when Matthew and Mary Winkler were dating and Mary was still just a teenager herself.) The story deserved a better movie, but this one isn't bad, and Michael Shanks is marvelously understated as Matthew even though Lifetime did the abused-wife schtick much better in "Black and Blue" (in which the authority figure the wife didn't dare report as a spousal abuse was a cop instead of a minister).