Central to the effectiveness of the film is the performance of Sally Field as Betty. She is magnificent. No star is more proficient at portraying the American woman beset by woes not of her own making. In her unadorned face are reflected the compassion, the sense of betrayal, the suffering, the maternal love and the gumption to escape her bondage. [07 Jan 1991]

Not Without My Daughter creeps up on you like an icy chill. Not since Midnight Express in 1978 has imprisonment in a foreign country been so alarmingly and intimately conveyed on film. [11 Jan 1991, p.69]

Here is a perplexing and frustrating film, which works with great skill to involve our emotions, while at the same time making moral and racial assertions that are deeply troubling.

Sally Field has the stage to herself to engage the audience’s sympathy, and this she does with an earnest, suitably emotional performance as a rather typically sincere, middle-class American.

This real-life case of Misery sets your teeth on edge, your blood boiling, your adrenaline surging with the subtlety of a World War II propaganda film.