A married man in love with a younger woman decides to kill his wife because he doesn’t have the heart to hurt her (she has her own lover, by the way). Foolishly, the man (Chris Cooper) introduces his lover (Rachel McAdams) to his best friend (Pierce Brosnan), those two start an affair, and when he finds out he goes back to his wife (Patricia Clarkson) and saves her just in time from the poison he's mixed with her stomach medicine. At the end, we see all the characters years later at a party playing (tellingly) Charades, all fences apparently long mended. Though I mostly liked MARRIED LIFE – it is full of suspense and dotted with black humor – I felt the ending was weak. The three alternate endings on the DVD are more interesting – and one of them is perfect, wrapping the story up on just the right ironic note. I just don't get why they didn't choose that ending.
MARRIED LIFE (2007)
A married man in love with a younger woman decides to kill his wife because he doesn’t have the heart to hurt her (she has her own lover, by the way). Foolishly, the man (Chris Cooper) introduces his lover (Rachel McAdams) to his best friend (Pierce Brosnan), those two start an affair, and when he finds out he goes back to his wife (Patricia Clarkson) and saves her just in time from the poison he's mixed with her stomach medicine. At the end, we see all the characters years later at a party playing (tellingly) Charades, all fences apparently long mended. Though I mostly liked MARRIED LIFE – it is full of suspense and dotted with black humor – I felt the ending was weak. The three alternate endings on the DVD are more interesting – and one of them is perfect, wrapping the story up on just the right ironic note. I just don't get why they didn't choose that ending.
