First off, The Unforgiveable rocked my world. I went in with the lowest of expectations. Sandra Bullock is an Oscar-winning actress, but to envision her as a murderer coming out of jail after two decades (for good behavior) and then having every door open in front of her closed due to her record… seemed like a leap. Not just any criminal record. She’s a cop killer. But the story around it is far from simple, and thus why we have the multi-layered, multi-faceted, extremely emotive, and explosively powerful Netflix original The Unforgiveable.
The movie is based on the award-winning three-part British television series and as a narrative film, it works like gangbusters. There are many moving parts here, which we can feel its small-screen roots. As such, these are characters that are deeply evolved and grab you by the lapels and do not let go. If anything, as The Unforgivable progresses, viewers become more deeply involved. This is a complicated story with many layers that span all sorts of socio-economic and familial dimensions.
The cast is sublime. Joining Bullock as Ruth is Viola Davis as Liz Ingram and Vincent D’Onofrio as her husband, John. He’s a lawyer and a “bleeding heart” one at that. Seems that Ruth has a much younger sister and with both their parents deceased she wants to find her sister who was merely five years old when the horror show that was Ruth’s crime went down. She knows nothing of her older sister but horrific flashes that are blurry beyond belief from that fateful day when the Sheriff showed up to remove them from their family homestead.
Ruth finds work through the help of her parole officer Vincent Cross (Rob Morgan), it’s not much. It’s preparing fish in one of Seattle’s fish markets. It is there she meets Jon Bernthal’s Blake (who’s having quite a month with his Oscar bussing performance in King Richard. She doesn’t trust him, but his heart seems to be in the most loquacious of places. Their relationship is handled with a fragility that fits their situation. Both or ex-cons, and as per the terms of their parole, they are not to see each other. Yet Bernthal’s characterization is subtle, understanding, and right where he needs to be. He’s helpful and kind to a woman who could use a friend right about now. Bernthal is turning into one of our MVPs in film. Getting killed on The Walking Dead has turned out to be the best thing to happen to him!
Bullock plays her as a women deeply wounded, remorseful and above all else, one who possesses a soul that is at its core kind and open to being a productive member of society, just as soon as she can find out if her younger sister is OK. Getting in the way of that is her adoptive parents, played by Richard Thomas and Linda Emond. Ruth’s daughter Katherine (Aisling Franciosi) is a star pupil and a wizard on the keys as a pianist.
Things get out of hand when the sons of the police officer that was killed two decades prior take exception to her being released early and decide to take matters into their own hands. That simple fact endangers everyone in her orbit and thus provides much of the tension in The Unforgiveable.
I have to give it to Bullock. Not knowing the nature of the murder, simply the premise, I didn’t buy the idea of the actress portraying a hardened murderer. It’s not that simple—by a long shot. As she portrays Ruth, she is a woman who is scorned, pained, emotionally scarred, and belittled by the life deck of cards she’s been dealt. The Oscar winner goes deep here as Ruth and has an arc that is moving, emotional, and above all else—believable to its core. In the hands of an actress such as the Virginia native, it is a powerful effort filled with personal integrity and honor to those who may be facing hardships in their lives.
The families at the core of this story—John (D’Onofrio), Liz (Davis), Michael Malcolm (Richard Thomas) and Rachel Malcolm (Linda Emond), and their adoptive daughter Katherine (Aisling Franciosi) are tight, loving, and endearing. This entry of Ruth into their lives is disruptive at the least and could tear them apart at the most.
Right there with Katherine is her BFF, Emily (Emma Nelson), who plays immensely into the narrative over the course of director Nora Fingscheidt’s film. The family that lives in the house where Ruth visits are kind, but weary by the presence of a stranger (Ruth) who starts coming around. There is clearly some sort of trauma that occurred at the site, and it haunts Ruth, so much so that although ordered to stay away—from the terms of her parole—she returns. This introduces her to John, who is an attorney who tries to help her see her daughter.
The key to any film such as this is the emotive connection between viewers and those onscreen. That is felt in droves in The Unforgiveable. What Ruth did was absolutely horrible, but as shown in Fingscheidt’s film, it didn’t occur in a vacuum. Most crime is not black and white, could be just one of the takeaways from this heart-wrenching film. It’s also got lots to say about second chances and the importance of them in our society as a whole, for fear of getting an entire population who are discarded.
Fingscheidt is a German filmmaker and tells the story with a touch of grey that is known to permeate certain cinema of that European country. That is a perfect fit for this tale and its tone is pitch-perfect throughout. She gets the most out of her actors and one can see why such powerhouses as Davis would join, even though her role may not be that enormous—but it is quite important. The director has done a solid job with the pacing, never rushing, and never taking it too slow to impart important information. This is a helmer whose work I will be keeping an eye on in the future.
This must be said. The Unforgivable is the rare even-handed look at middle America. Hollywood can sometimes treat these terribly-called fly-over states with stereotypes at best and indignation at the worst. These are real people with real, earth-shaking problems that affect more than simply the protagonist and her circle.
How it leaves you upon its completion is a marvel. This is one of the best movies I have seen all year in terms of pulling my emotive strings in a manner that felt raw, real, and about as organic as emotion gets.
Grade: A-