Unforgettable - Tödliche Liebe

Spare yourself from wasting an hour and forty minutes on this miserable poorly acted snorefest. This is a story that we've seen many times before. You know the one about the couple in love who are ready to take the next step in their relationship when suddenly the psychotic ex comes to make things troublesome for them? We've been there before. It isn't new ground, nor is it a unique story anymore. This story takes no effort to make it's self unique from those other films that focused on this very same plot. Had it been different than the others in some way, it would have been better. Furthermore, Unforgettable mostly felt like an evening Lifetime movie and most of the scenes were dreadfully boring and uneventful. It doesn't even begin to entertain until the last 20 minutes. The saving grace is that it stars not one but two beautiful leading ladies: Rosario Dawson (Marvel/Netflix's DareDevil and Luke Cage, Sin City), who was actually the reason I decided to watch this film in the first place, and Katherine Heigl (Knocked Up, Life as We Know It). The tension between Dawson and Heigl at times felt forced and awkward but both did a great job overall. Heigl in her role as the psychotic Barbie- type really made us believe that she was truly unhinged. The way she menacingly glares at Dawson in her scenes. The way you could actually see when her blood begins to boil...she played the role well. The problem is that even though Heigl and Dawson led the film, they were bound by the limitations of bad writing, bad directing, and bad production and no amount of talent from either Heigl nor Dawson could save this film from it's own failures.

Ignore the bad reviews, they must have been watching something else.

The idea of recovering from a broken relationship is one that could make a very heavy emotional movie. The deep feelings we have for one another when in love and the discovery that your partner no longer shares those feelings is lot to bear. But why explore such issues when you can just make another psycho ex movie.

They must make at least one or two of these every year. However, such films are not being made because they portray deep themes that resonate with the audience. They're being made because they're cheap and pretty much guarantee a return on investment for multi- million (sometimes billion) dollar movie studios.

With the exception of Rosario Dawson, who gives her role a better performance than it deserves, no one in this movie even attempts to do anything compelling with this material. Katherine Heigl's character seems copied and pasted from her role in Home Sweet Hell (2015). Although that cinematic experience was also a suckfest, at least it tried to be something unique. In that film's world, her role as the stuck up housewife who's willing to do anything (including murder) worked (within the established parameters). Here, she plays the same role but in a more grounded universe where you have to seriously wonder who could possibly marry such an abysmal characterization of a human being.

I could criticize the movie's pacing if it had any. Each act feels prolonged far longer than it should be with Heigl repeatedly messing with Dawson as we wait for Dawson to figure out that her fiance's ex is truly, unbelievably, Simon Legree evil. When we finally get to the third act rather than following a natural progression the movie is dragged there kicking and screaming as it allows characters to discover things not because it makes sense but because even the filmmakers finally recognized that this thing must end.

What might be worst of all is that this movie concludes with a bit of clear sequel baiting. At that point, all I could think was "sure, why not". Let's get Unforgettable 2. Hell, let's build an Unforgettable Cinematic Universe with spin-offs and team ups. In that way I hope that I can leave this particular movie's universe and be sure to never come back.

In short, if you need some painful dental work done that would be a much more entertaining expenditure of your time and money.

A curious note first of all: this is the first movie directed by Denise Di Novi. She's been a producer for years - I thought I had seen her name somewhere before, and then it clicked when Tim Burton came to mind (she's produced many of his best films) - but now, only now, does she step behind the camera. Why for this? Did the original director walk away or the producers couldn't find someone? It's not strange to see that this is a directorial debut, but it is odd to see that this is made by an industry professional, nay a veteran, and that it's so... bland. Unforgettable rests in an uncomfortable area: not fun enough to be a trashy/campy movie like a No Good Deed or Obsessed (perhaps Idris Elba is the x-factor?), or even like a made-for-TV Lifetime stalker thriller like Stalked by my Doctor (imagine Eric Roberts in the Katherine Heigl role!), and it's not unique or interesting enough to be good.

Actually, that's not wholly fair: Rosario Dawson, as the new lover (and soon to be fiancé) of the ex-husband of the jilted Heigl character, is quite good. It's hard for her to be anything else, and she takes a movie as middling as this as seriously as she would Sin City or Danny Boyle's Trance or whatever the case. She's here to work, while an actress like Heigl is here to be in her one quiet-but- crazy-B-word modus operondi, and Cheryl Ladd (yep, ex Charlies Angels Cheryl Ladd) is more apt for a Lifetime movie, albeit her profile is just right for this character of Heigl's mother.

We've seen this all before, even if we think the divorced angle makes it a little different (only barely, maybe), and as it involves people of mega privilege it feels distanced from a lot of our lives so the emotional immediacy will only be there for those who really stretch to feel it. It's a telegraphed story put upon a movie that somehow has the even stranger luck, speaking of people behind the camera, of being shot by Caleb Deschanel(!) Perhaps if you have less than zero things to do (or are a master at procrastination) and this pops up on a Sunday afternoon on TV it's passable. But in a theater? Well, let's just say you'll be 80% of the time dulled, maybe 19% of the time entertained in that trashy-campy way (which is not a great ratio)... and then the last 1% is a complete WTF last scene ending that made me curse the screen I was gazing.

Rosario Dawson is the dumbest girl ever in this movie... Really