In short: Unforgettable (1996)

At the time it came out, neo noir specialist – who would eventually and somewhat tragically become a mere dependable TV show episode hired gun -John Dahl’s follow-up movie to his brilliant The Last Seduction was a total flop: a commercial dud that was also hated by the critics. Though, to be fair, the latter problem seems to have been with Ebert and Co.’s inability to get over the film’s “contrived” set-up, the sort of thing this genre viewer hardly bats an eye at because he understands that contrived set-ups are what nearly all thrillers have. Or would anyone call the plots  and basic ideas of brilliant movies in the genre like Psycho or Vertigo anything but contrived? Indeed, one might find one of those “metaphors” professional film critics may have heard about here. May there be something a film has to say about grief in the tale of a man (Ray Liotta) trying to catch the murderer of his wife with the help of an experimental drug that makes one relive the memories of other people but demands a heavy physical and psychological price?

Now, having said that, I also have to warn the prospective viewer that this isn’t a secret thriller masterpiece on par with its director’s best movies. The problem’s not in the script’s set-up – contrived or not - nor is it Dahl’s love for pretty wonderful and slightly surreal big set-pieces. The film’s actual major flaw is a badly paced third where Liotta’s drug-induced flashbacks become too long and much too detailed, explaining way more than is necessary of the things even the dumbest audience member will have already inferred and dragging the film down to a crawl. Which is something no thriller can afford. It’s honestly nothing that couldn’t have been fixed by cutting about ten minutes of film and rewriting ten more, but it’s still surprisingly damaging for the effect of Unforgettable as a whole.


I still find a lot to like about the film, though, be it Liotta’s all-out performance that does seem to aim for the same spot of exalted, intense yet secretly precise overacting that Nicolas Cage hits so wonderfully these days, Dahl’s against type casting of Linda Fiorentino as a much too nice and cooperative scientist she really seems to get into, or how enjoyably contrived the first two thirds of the film are.