A Deadly American Marriage 2025 Movie Review
“I can’t tell” was what Tom Martens told the 911 operator when they asked him if Jason Corbett was still breathing. Later, he and his daughter, Molly, Jason’s wife, can be heard attempting or feigning an attempt to perform CPR on Corbett’s unresponsive body. Checking for signs of breathing precedes CPR. “I can’t tell” implies either he didn’t care to check whether Corbett was still breathing or he already knew that Corbett was dead.
Very rarely in true crime documentaries do we get to see an even portrayal of both sides of the story. No one involved had “declined to comment” and it felt very much like witnessing a live trial where cases of the defense and prosecution are being presented as we the audience watch on like a member of the jury. In this sense, this documentary succeeds in allowing you to form your own opinion about the truth surrounding the death of Jason Corbett – was he the victim or the aggressor who was killed in self-defense?
A few things stood out to me. Tom’s coldness and detachment when discussing the death of his son-in-law, and his smirk that was captured at the police station. Molly’s unwavering focus on herself and her image as the mother of Jack and Sarah, speaking of them as if she was their birth mother, as well as the abject absence of any remorse or horror towards her husband’s death, even if he was abusive according to her. After all, she admitted to striking him in the head with a brick.
Jack and Sarah were more reliable narrators, especially when they each expressed sadness and guilt over their initial statements to the authorities at the tender ages at 9 and 7 respectively, that portrayed their father as having a temper and abusive towards Molly; these statements were later retracted when they concluded that they had been groomed by Molly. The defense attorneys homed in on medical notes that indicated Jason reporting “getting angry for no reason”, while ignoring the bigger picture that Jason had hypothyroidism and hadn’t been taking his medication for seven months. Symptoms of hypothyroidism include weight gain, fatigue, depression and irritability.
DARVO is Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender; Molly gave a masterclass of this here. A real victim of coercive control wouldn’t dare to risk their abuser finding a recording device, let alone plant several at various locations in the home and in the car. Molly saying “I was the mother to the Jack and Sarah that existed in another lifetime” also informed me that she never truly cared for the children. She only saw them as extensions of herself as she basked in title of Mother and wanted them so that she could continue her charade. But Jason would not allow her to be their adoptive mother and wanted to return to Ireland with Jack and Sarah. That was the motive.
