You have to give the makers of the 1996 film, Unforgettable, some credit. It takes a certain amount of courage to give your movie a title like Unforgettable. You’re practically asking some snarky critic to comment on the fact that she can’t remember your movie.
Well, I’ll resist the temptation because I can remember enough about this movie to review it. I saw it a few days ago on This TV and, at first, I was excited because it was a Ray Liotta movie. Ray Liotta is an entertaining and likable actor who, nowadays, only seems to get cast in small, tough guy roles. Nowadays, a typical Liotta role seems to be something like the character he played in Killing Me Softly. He showed up. He was tough. He got killed for no good reason. So, whenever you come across a film in which Liotta gets to do something more than just get shot, you kind of have an obligation to watch.
In Unforgettable, Liotta plays Dr. David Krane, who is haunted by the unsolved murder of his wife. Fortunately (or perhaps, unfortunately), Dr. Martha Briggs (Linda Fiorentino) has developed a formula that can be used to transfer memories from one person to another. All you have to do is extract some spinal fluid! Or something like that. It doesn’t make any sense to me and I have to admit that I kinda suspect that the science might not actually check out.
Anyway, Dr. Krane is all like, “I want to inject myself with my dead wife’s spinal fluid so I can experience her final moments!”
And Dr. Briggs is all like, “But this could kill you because there’s all these vaguely defined side effects!”
But Dr. Krane does it anyway and he discovers that his wife was murdered by a lowlife criminal named Eddie Dutton (Kim Coates)! So, Dr. Krane chases Eddie all ocer the city and it’s interesting to see that a doctor can apparently keep up with a career criminal. I mean, you would think that Eddie’s experience with being chased and Krane’s inexperience with chasing would give Eddie an advantage. Anyway, regardless, it doesn’t matter because Eddie is eventually gunned down by the police and Dr. Krane is fired from his job.
Hmmm … well, that was quick. I guess the movie’s over…
No, not quite! It turns out that someone hired Eddie to kill Dr. Krane’s wife! And it turns out that person was a cop! But which cop!? Well, there’s only two cops in the film who actually have any lines so it has to be one of them. And one of the cops is so unlikable that it’s obvious from the start that he’s a red herring. So, I guess that means the actual murderer is the one that you’ll suspect from the first moment he shows up.
(For the record, the two cops are played by Christopher McDonald and Peter Coyote. I won’t reveal which one is unlikable and which one is a murderer but seriously, you’ve already guessed, haven’t you?)
Anyway, it’s all pretty stupid and a waste of everyone involved. Ray Liotta is likable and sympathetic but the film gets bogged down with trying to convince us that crimes can be solved through spinal fluid. It’s a dumb premise that the movie takes way too seriously and it never quite works.
Still, I hope that someone will give Ray Liotta another good role at some point in the future. He deserves better than supporting roles and Chantix commercials.
The place is Red Rock, a little town located in the middle of nowhere Wyoming. When a man from Texas (played by Nicolas Cage) wanders into his bar, the owner, Wayne (J.T. Walsh), assumes that the man is Lyle From Dallas, the semi-legendary hit man who Wayne has hired to kill his wife, Suzanne (Lara Flynn Boyle). Wayne gives the man half of his payment in advance and promises the other half after Suzanne is dead. What Wayne doesn’t realize is that Lyle From Dallas is not actually Lyle From Dallas. Instead, he is a drifter named Michael who has just recently lost his job. Michael takes Wayne’s money but, when he sees Suzanne, he tells her that Wayne wants her dead. Suzanne responds by offering to pay Michael to kill Wayne. Michael mostly just wants to leave town but his every effort is thwarted, with him continually only managing to get a mile or two out of town just to then find circumstances forcing him to once again pass the Red Rock welcome sign. Meanwhile, the real Lyle From Dallas (Dennis Hopper) has shown up and he is pissed.
Fay Forrest (Joanne Whalley) and her boyfriend, Vince Miller (Michael Madsen), make their living stealing from the mob. After their latest job results in the death of a made man, Fay decides that she needs to escape from the abusive Vince. She runs away to Las Vegas, where she looks up a small-time, financially strapped P.I., Jack Andrews (Val Kilmer). She hires Jack to help her fake her death, offering to pay him $5,000 upfront and $5,000 after she’s dead. Jack is reluctant to get involved but he also has a loan shark threatening to break every bone in his body. Jack helps Fay fake her death but then Fay leaves town without paying him the second $5,000. Even worse, both Vince and the mob quickly figure out that Fay is not actually dead and join Jack in trying to track her down.
Through the Shattered Lens 