Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Nora Fingscheidt
Starring: Sandra Bullock, Vincent D’Onofrio, Jon Bernthal, Richard Thomas, Linda Emond, Aisling
Franciosi, Rob Morgan, Viola Davis
German director Nora Fingscheidt burst onto the scene last year
with
System Crasher, the story of a young tearaway girl's struggles to adapt to civilised
society. For her English language debut, The Unforgivable, she remains in similar territory, with a tale of a convict trying to make
it on the outside. But where Fingscheidt's debut employed subtlety in a
story with a decidedly unsubtle protagonist, here we have the opposite - a
taciturn heroine in a movie that hammers home its points.
Famously proud of her German roots, it's no surprise to see
Sandra Bullock recruit Fingscheidt for this movie adaptation of
British TV series The Unforgiven. Bullock takes the lead role of Ruth Slater, who was sent to prison for
shooting dead a cop involved in the eviction of herself and her little
sister from their family farm. After serving 20 years, Ruth is released for
good behaviour. A skilled carpenter, she takes a rewarding job working for
low pay constructing a homeless shelter, and a not so rewarding job gutting
fish at a processing plant.
Ruth's main goal is to connect with Katie (Aisling Franciosi), the
sister she hasn't seen since that fateful day on the farm. Katie has been
raised by foster parents and apart from suffering flashbacks to the shooting
(her only memory of Ruth), appears to have a good life. Meanwhile, the now
adult sons of Ruth's victim are plotting revenge for their father's
murder.
Compressing a multi-episode TV drama into a feature film, it doesn't take
long for The Unforgivable to begin taking storytelling
shortcuts. The first of several improbabilities comes when Ruth visits her
old home and, wouldn't you know it, the new tenant just happens to be a
family lawyer (Vincent D'Onofrio) who sympathises with Ruth's
predicament and agrees to help her establish contact with Katie.
Similar contrivances follow when it comes to the thriller aspect of
The Unforgivable, with the vengeful sons improbably getting access to details of Ruth's
whereabouts. I'm no expert on the American legal system, but would a
cop-killer really be released back into the same community where they
committed their crime?
In parts, The Unforgivable works as a middling drama about
the struggles of convicts to make a new life on the outside. Bullock is
quite good, even if her makeup free performance does feel like an awards
season cliché. The best scenes revolve around her relationship with a fellow
fish gutter played by Jon Bernthal, refreshingly cast against type as
a genuinely nice guy.
It's the thriller element that scuppers The Unforgivable. Ruth's victim's sons have an understandable grievance, but the movie's
desperate need for the audience to side with Ruth sees them reduced to
one-note villains with as much depth as the home invaders from
Home Alone.
The Unforgivable has a card up its sleeve, but refusing to
reveal its full hand until its dying moments turns out to be a misjudged
play. Not knowing the full story from the beginning leaves us struggling to
sympathise with a character who doesn't seem to even want our sympathy, even
if the movie she's in most certainly wants us on her side. As this is made
for Netflix, we're left wondering why it crammed so many subplots into a two
hour movie rather than a limited series with time to explore them in more
detail. The answer suggests that the streaming service (and Bullock, who
promptly ditched TV as soon as she became a star in the early '90s) still
believes the feature film is the format of true prestige productions.
The Unforgivable is on Netflix now.
