"The Unforgivable" is an extremely engaging drama. It's amazing that with all the slow narrative it's impossible to tear yourself away from the screen, and that's especially nice today when modern two-hour movies often just put viewers to sleep - there's no unnecessary time in Unforgiven.
Ruth Slater (Sandra Bullock) is paroled from prison.
where she served her 20-year sentence for killing the sheriff. Under what circumstances this happened, we are told rather quickly: Ruth and her five-year-old sister lost their parents, the girls had to be evicted from their parents' home, and there was absolutely nowhere to go from there. The process of the sheriff's murder itself is not shown, so we get the sense that it is somewhat complicated.
Ruth's sister Catherine grew up in a nursing home.
While Ruth was serving time in prison, her sister Katherine (Aisling Franchosi) was being raised in foster care. Ruth wrote letters from prison, but her foster parents - for obvious reasons - wouldn't give them to her, believing it best not to bother her with old tragic events.
Ruth's life after leaving prison.
Upon leaving prison, Ruth is placed under the supervision of police officer Vincent Cross (Rob Morgan), who explains to her the various restrictions for people on parole. She is housed in a dingy dormitory and tries to find a job in her field - she had learned carpentry in prison - but no one hires her, so she has to go work in a fish factory, where Officer Cross suggested she go - they take anyone, including ex-convicts, because the work is hard and the pay is low.
Ruth's search for her sister.
Meanwhile, Ruth tries to find traces of her younger sister. Probation rules prohibit her from communicating with Catherine, but Ruth at least wants to find out if the girl is okay because she has no information about her.
To do so, she also visits their old house where the Ingram family now lives: lawyer John (Vincent D'Onofrio), his wife Liz (Viola Davis) and their two children. Ruth asks John to represent her in the search for her sister.
The Unforgivable movie story.
Unforgiven was originally a 2009 British mini-series that was well received by audiences and critics alike. It consisted of only three episodes and lasted a total of 135 minutes. The role of Ruth Slater in the series was played by Suranne Jones and her work was highly praised.
Suranne Jones.
In 2010, the rights for a remake of the series were acquired by producer Graham King. In the main role of this expected Angelina Jolie, to put the image should be Christopher McQuarrie. But McQuarrie was invited to shoot "Jack Reacher", which was to give rise to a powerful new franchise (of which, as we know, did not work a damn), and the project with "Unforgiven" stalled.
For a while, Scott Frank (he's a famous screenwriter in general, but as a director he's only directed a few episodes of various TV series) was tipped to direct the project, but then things stalled there too, and Frank went on to direct A Walk Among the Graves with Liam Neeson.
In 2014, it looked like McQuarrie was back on the project, and would appear in three capacities at once: writer, director and producer. But he was tapped to direct Mission Impossible: Outcast Tribe, and dropped out of the project again - this time for good.
As a result, the project was launched in early 2020, and filming at that time had to stop - you know what for. For the main role was taken Sandra Bullock, and to direct the image invited German Nora Finscheldt, who previously did not put anything in the United States, but her previous film "System Breaker" won two awards at the Berlin Film Festival 2019.
As many as four screenwriters worked on the film's script. Nothing good came out of it, but we will talk about the screenplay later.
Scenario
Frankly, I really don't understand why they cast 55-year-old Sandra Bullock in the lead role (and also with such a visible trace of plastic surgery on her face). In the series, Ruth committed the crime when she was sixteen and her sister was five. She served fifteen years and came out of prison as a thirty-one-year-old woman.
Here Ruth served twenty years, so she was thirty-five and her sister was five at the time of the crime? And this is despite the fact that they are siblings, nowhere does it say they are half-sisters, for example.
Let's not be picky though, children from the same family can have a significant age difference. ("But not thirty," ).
She staged and acted everything quite well. Sandra Bullock's character, the screenwriters did not bother to provide enough dialogue, monologues, which would somehow reveal her character, so she is mostly in the picture eloquently silent and, through gritted teeth, fights with the system, which rejects her.
In fact, the show was mainly about a man who has served his sentence for a crime and is trying to return to a normal life, but he has almost no chance to do so, society simply does not accept him, and this is a very serious problem in many countries.
The staging is done well: the streets are dingy (they were shot in Vancouver, Canada), the environment is gray, the sense of total despair embraces the main heroine who nevertheless does not give up in her effort to find her sister.
Good acting work: in addition to Sandra Bullock, Vincent D'Onofrio, John Bernthal and Viola Davis have interesting roles here. The musical accompaniment is very well done: the composers include Hans Zimmer (and Dave Fleming), by the way.
And what's wrong with that, you might ask, since you and Bagel only gave the film a 6.2? The screenplay here is bad. And this script ruins the impression of this film. In the British series, everything was logical and clear. Ruth committed a crime - well, yes, in a chain of tragic circumstances, but still - she was punished, after which she tried to return to a normal life and at the same time to find traces of her sister.
The film kept the big picture more or less clear (and the murdered sheriff's children wanting revenge, and the circumstances of how Ruth met her sister), but generously contributed a portion of pure American cinematic madness into the picture.
In the film, Ruth did not commit the crime for which she served 20 years. This is not explicitly stated, but constantly hinted at from the beginning of the film, so it is in no way a spoiler. We do know that it's sort of ne'er-do-well. In the series, Ruth is put in a very modest room, but here she's put in a kind of pre-floor of hell - well, you have to up the ante, you can't help it.
From time to time the screenwriters allow for some absolutely nightmarish gaffes. For example, Officer Cross informs Ruth that she is strictly forbidden to communicate with other inmates, while giving her the address of the fish factory, where precisely the inmates are taken. Ridiculous, yes.
The story with John Bernthal's character befriending Ruth seemed to develop in an interesting way, and then suddenly it was taken and literally flushed down the toilet. It seemed completely impotent.
Even the brothers, the murdered sheriff's sons, were a complete madhouse. I don't want to spoil it, but it's face-to-face.
The holes in the script.
And when they told us at the end of the movie what kind of things really happened there, Bublik and I turned to each other and there was just one question in our eyes, "Those screenwriters really think the audience is idiots, don't they?" Because you couldn't think of a greater cretinism.
How the director couldn't see the holes in the script, how it wasn't seen by Sandra Bullock, whose production company was involved in making the film, I don't know. I have to say, though, that there are a lot of positive reviews from viewers and critics, a lot of people liked the film, it has a 7.2 rating on IMDB, so I guess we and Bublik are just picking on each other. Or we simply have a hypersensitivity to the illogicality and absurdity of what's going on, and that's ruined the whole impression for us.
But we write these reviews to give our opinion, so we gave it. Not poorly staged, not poorly acted, scripted - extremely weak and manipulative, and it ruined the experience for us.
