The silly season is upon us, and with it comes an influx of movies setting their sights on award recognition. Hasn’t Netflix gone hard in December, with Tick, Tick… Boom!, The Power of the Dog, and Don’t Look Away in front of us. I doubt I’m going to get the time to review them all sadly, but today I start with The Unforgivable.
After twenty years in jail for murdering a police sheriff, Ruth Slater (Sandra Bullock) is on early parole for good behaviour, trying to set up her life again in a few different ways. She completed a carpentry certificate in prison, and works two jobs – helping to build a community centre for the homeless, and the graveyard shift at a seafood packing plant that seems to be where all the ex-criminals go. But all Ruth really wants to do is contact her sister, who was five years old at the time of her incarceration; Ruth is aware that she has zero rights to interfere with her sister’s foster family, but she would really like to know that Katie (Aisling Franciosi) is okay, and for Katie to know that her big sister exists. Directed by Nora Fingscheidt, this is another heavy performance from Sandra Bullock where she isn’t smiling, and with The Unforgivable’s December release on Netflix, one would be ‘forgiven’ for recalling a similar event with Bird Box a few years back. Oh, the symmetry 😏
Well pardon me for trying to lighten the mood with terrible jokes, because The Unforgivable isn’t going to give you a good time. For at least the first half of the movie it is an intense look into how Ruth is viewed as a criminal everywhere she goes despite serving her time. Her dwellings are awful, and her opportunities are limited; anyone who discovers she’s a cop-killer wants to kick the shit out of her. Tonally, this movie reminded me of Ben is Back – that movie from a couple years ago where Julia Roberts’ soul-sucking ex-addict son in Lucas Hedges returns home and puts the whole family on edge, waiting for him to regress again. Not a fun time, and the movie drills down on how some decisions you make in life can weigh you down like a boulder you can’t get out from under, and how you can never go back to innocent times again. Not only that, the consequences of Ruth’s actions ripple through her community, spreading more heartache and dread – Ruth isn’t the only person who has to pay for the circumstances of her past decisions, for Steve (Will Pulen) and Keith Whelan (Tom Guiry) are the police sheriff’s sons who grew up without a father and an incapable mother who drank too much. Steve now has a wife and baby he isn’t too thrilled about, while Keith contemplates attacking Ruth now that she’s back in public. And from there, the movie is about choices, innit? Through flashbacks, The Unforgivable allows us to feel some leniency towards Ruth through the first half, seeing that her murderous actions were taken in a frantic panic, while the sons plan premeditated revenge, which I think is worse. It’s a little wonky; the revenge thread doesn’t fit all so snuggly with what the rest of the movie is doing for mine, with Ruth’s realistic struggle trying to get back on her feet – particularly when Steve gets involved; sometimes when characters make bad choices in movies you can understand their side, and go with it, but then sometimes there’s just idiots who are idiots.
There are moments where The Unforgivable feels like a wooden slide puzzle, where the pieces stick every so often trying to fit in place, but it’s not like any character strand is ever forgettable. I say that, because while Ruth is rebuilding her life, we also meet infrequently with her friendly co-worker, Blake (Jon Bernthal), Katie’s foster parents in Michael (Richard Thomas) and Rachel Malcolm (Linda Emond), and Katie’s foster sister, Emily (Emma Nelson), who’s doing her own investigation. There’s also Ruth’s probation officer, Vincent (Rob Morgan), who is sometimes contradictory, and I swear at one point is preening himself in the sun. John (Vincent D’Onofrio) and Liz Ingram (Viola Davis) are the new homeowners of Ruth’s old house who conflict on how to interpret Ruth’s entire situation; but hey, check out this movie if you ever want to see the a Viola Davis character change her mind mid-rant and concede – there’s something I never thought I’d see, and I’m certain we won’t be seeing a transgression like that ever pulled by Amanda Waller in The Suicide Squad sequels, that’s for sure.
For a long while, with the brothers looking for twenty-year old revenge, The Unforgivable looks like it wants to screw the knife in, and really press down on the horribleness of the situation that Ruth is struggling to make work. But instead, I felt the movie releases all the tension by delivering a twist that I didn’t see coming, and a twist that I didn’t think needed to be there. But hindsight is a wonderful thing, and I bet the twist revealed in The Unforgivable is one of those twists that may’ve felt good in theory, but it’s only through action that you think, ‘yeah, maybe that’s not what this movie is really about’. Because yeah… Ruth has actually been innocent the whole time. What sucks about this is I’m sure that there are criminals who face the hardships and despair that Ruth has been suffering through for the entire movie, so why not let her be the criminal and walk the narrative to the end. I imagine the tension like a stack of tiles – they’re kind’ve bulky and awkward to hold, and it’s a lot more of an accomplishment if the movie had slowly and gently gotten them to the ground, than to just drop them and let the fragments fly.
So yeah, I think the first half delivers a version of ‘the unforgivable’ where actions have consequences, highlighting how society demands more culturally from criminals than the legal system facilitates. But, the second half, brings in an element of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that’s just bad luck. Man, a few times this year I’ve bullied a movie for its closer and it’s a shame to have to do it again, but having said that, I think the movie is still pretty good. It’s weird at first, watching a twenty-year-sentenced crim played by a woman who it seems has clearly had plastic surgery or Botox injections (‘can he say that??’); but that’s one thing, superficially, and can be easy to overlook when Sandra Bullock’s characterisation is a job well done. And despite only smallish parts, Viola Davis and Jon Bernthal are still elite. Also, I’m more convinced every day that Vincent D’Onofrio can do anything – I wanna see more stuff from him (and I’m hearing rumours that he could be back as the Kingpin in one of Marvel’s projects; please, let it be so).
If you want to feel bad for people that aren’t you and thank your lucky stars for what you have for a couple hours, then The Unforgivable has got it. Not the happiest of movies, but still groovy. 3.5
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