The Unforgivable

I can understand why Sandra Bullock wanted to do a project that allowed her to play against type, but she should have kept on looking when the script for The Unforgivable came across her desk.  This is a heavy-handed sad sack of a melodrama that suffers from contrived storytelling, some confusing editing and casting decisions, and an overall indifference to some of the potentially challenging themes its story brings up, choosing instead to just wallow in misery.

The film is based on a British TV miniseries from 2009, and apparently Hollywood has been trying to get a cinematic remake off the ground for years.  I can see how the story here could work in a serialized format expanded over multiple episodes, but in a movie that runs just under two hours, it feels incredibly dense and unsatisfying.  It doesn't help that director Nora Fingscheidt (a German filmmaker making her Hollywood debut here) makes some crucial storytelling mistakes here.  In the film's opening moments, we see Bullock's character, Ruth Slater, being released from prison after serving 20 years for killing a cop.  As we watch her being reintroduced into society, the movie keeps on cutting to a car accident happening to a different woman named Katherine (Aisling Franciosi).  The way these two events are edited together, we think the accident is a flashback that led to Ruth's prison sentence, rather than something that's happening at the same time.  It's certain to lead to some early confusion in the audience, until we later learn why Ruth was in jail.

The truth about Katherine is that she is Ruth's sister, who was five years old when Ruth initially went to prison, and is now living as the adopted daughter of a protective couple (Richard Thomas and Linda Emond).  Katherine has no real memories of her traumatic past, though she is haunted by random visions and flashes of a violent scene.  Here's the funny thing.  It's stated that Katherine was five when Ruth was sent away, which would make her 25 today.  However, she looks and behaves like she is a teenager.  It's this kind of sloppy storytelling that kills the heavy mood that the movie is obviously trying to create, and earns unintentional laughs from the viewer.  The movie touches on a lot of sensitive subjects, such as redemption, how former criminals are treated in society, how the desire for revenge can ruin us, and even a jealous love triangle.  But due to the unsatisfying and rushed narrative, the movie never really gets to explore these ideas in any depth, and simply tosses them in the script for cheap sentiment or plot convenience.

After leaving prison, Ruth's parole officer (Rob Morgan) finds her a halfway house, and she proceeds to try to get her life back together by finding work, which is harder than she initially thinks.  Her real desire, however, is to track down her sister and find out what happened to her, as she's had no contact with her since she was sent away.  She visits her old home where the murder occurred, and finds a kindly lawyer named John (Vincent D'Onofrio) and his wife (Viola Davis, wasted in a largely unnecessary role) living there happily with their kids.  Ruth is eventually able to convince John to help guide her through the system so that she can hopefully see her sister again.  While this is all happening, the two sons of the cop that Ruth killed, Steve (Will Pullen) and Keith (Tom Guiry), find out that she is back on the street, and start plotting revenge on her.

Rather than combine these multiple plots in a realistic way that builds, The Unforgivable frequently relies on forced coincidences, or scenes that go over the top in its melodrama, such as the scene where Ruth has a face-to-face meeting with Katherine's adopted parents, and winds up blowing up at them in a profanity-fueled rant that is more unintentionally comical than harrowing and sad.  Equally over the top is a scene where Ruth becomes a victim of an abusive co-worker when her criminal past is revealed.  A movie that honestly shows the hardships those who have served lengthy prison sentences have in returning to society would be honestly compelling, but this doesn't want to be that movie.  It wants to be exploitative, and use its ideas for the purpose of cheap thrills.  Rather than truly explore the pain and anguish these various characters are feeling, it plugs them into a "feel bad" story where all we can do is watch them be miserable, and make terrible decisions that will potentially lead to tragedy for everyone involved.

A great example would be the two brothers who are plotting revenge on Ruth for what she did to their father 20 years ago.  One of the guys is initially hesitant, as he has a wife and a baby.  His descent into red-hot rage that fuels his actions during the film's climax are forced and unconvincing, starting with the encounter he has with Ruth, which should crackle with tension, but feels oddly limp and uninspired.  The moment that finally breaks him and causes him to go over the edge is also unnecessary.  It all ends with a convoluted climax about mistaken identity, and a final confrontation that, again, should be tense, but is as flat as the rest of the movie is.  The biggest problem is that it portrays the two vengeful brothers largely as morons, instead of calculating threats.  I get that the movie is supposed to be showing us how their anger blinds them to the point that they do their final actions, but the screenplay is so basic and simple, they come across as a pair of angry dopes.

You can easily see how with a different script and approach, The Unforgivable could have been a masterful and hard-hitting drama.  Unfortunately, the movie is way too simplistic to make much of an impression.  Instead of truly exploring its subject matter, it takes the easy and commercial route of manipulation, rather than genuine emotion.

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