Mark Reviews Movies: THE UNFORGIVABLE

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Become a Patron

Review by Mark Dujsik | November 24, 2021

Society looks at the formerly incarcerated in a certain way, and that way is colored by crime itself and the specific circumstances in which the crime occurred. As for Ruth Slater (Sandra Bullock), the protagonist of The Unforgivable, she essentially has three strikes against her. She is a convicted felon. The crime was murder. The victim was a police officer.

Anyone who might not judge Ruth for the first fact might have a change of heart upon hearing the second. Anyone who might look deeper into the circumstances of the murder, searching for some kind of understanding or justification for it, might not get past the third fact.

That process happens a few times in Peter Craig, Hillary Seitz, and Courtenay Miles' screenplay, which somewhat works when it focuses on the struggles Ruth must face to once again become a part of a society that, at best, wants nothing to do with her and, at worst, would rather she be locked up still or dead. The movie, directed by Nora Fingscheidt, wants to do a lot more, though, and its various aims, as well as the means the movie uses to accomplish them, get in the way of the story's strongest element.

Ruth is released from prison at the start, having served about 20 years there and being granted parole. Everything seems lined up for her to have a new start. She has a room in a halfway house and, since she studied carpentry while in prison, a job waiting for her. It quickly falls apart, though, since the housing complex is filled with snooping ex-cons, habitual drug addicts, and violent women. As for the job, her would-be boss changes his mind when Ruth arrives for her first day, likely having received a call from her hard-nosed parole officer (played by Rob Morgan).

Instead, Ruth ends up working a seafood packaging facility. There, she meets Blake (a genuinely earnest Jon Bernthal), a seemingly kind guy who wants to be Ruth's friend or more, and picks up a second job, building a kitchen for the homeless. Everything seems back on track—except for the matter that the truth of her past could once again put a stop to any progress.

As all of this unfolds with a sense of doom for Ruth's chances, the screenplay, based on the 2009 British miniseries "Unforgiven," expands further in less-convincing, more convoluted ways. First, there's the matter of Ruth's only surviving family: her much-younger sister Katie (Aisling Franciosi). A series of flashbacks build up to the killing that landed Ruth in prison (so slowly that we know it's only a matter of time before a pretty predictable twist arrives), and in the present day, Katie, still suffering some remnants of trauma from the violence she vaguely recalls, has been adopted by another family. Her adoptive parents (played by Richard Thomas and Linda Emond) have kept Ruth's existence a secret from Katie and put a restraining order on Ruth to keep it that way.

By way of happy coincidence and too-convenient contrivance, Ruth gets help in this matter from John (Vincent D'Onofrio), a good-hearted attorney who just happens to have moved into the house where the crime occurred. Viola Davis, by the way, plays John's suspicious wife Liz, in a thankless role that eventually seems to be going somewhere, only to have her ultimately playing chauffeur as a final act of unfortunate under-utilization.

Meanwhile, the dead cop's sons (played by William Pullen and Tom Guiry) begin stalking Ruth, debating and dithering about whether or not to get revenge for their father's death—and how to go about doing it. It's a pretty transparent delaying tactic, especially when one takes into account how quickly and easily the hesitant brother changes his mind in order to set the third act in motion.

Bullock, providing a quiet and constant sense of fear about the future and defeat within the present, is quite good here, even if Ruth feels like a pawn amidst the ever-growing complications of the plot at times (A scene between her and Katie's adoptive parents, for example, feels false in the moment, as a way to keep the attempted-reunion subplot going—and even less honest once the real truth is revealed). She grounds Ruth's story—of trying to return to some kind of normalcy in a place that and among people who will never let her forget her past—with aching regret and rising frustration.

With all of its additional complications and characters (most of whom are relegated to being gears in the mechanics of the plot), the movie itself, though, is never quite about Ruth's attempts to re-adjust to society and adjust to her new life—as well as our own feelings of sympathy for the character. By the end and with the biggest revelation of The Unforgivable, it's not about those things at all, as the screenplay twists and turns its way into a series of dead ends.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products