The Unforgivable: Sandra Bullock Vehicle Not Unwatchable but Not Great

By Liam Lacey

Rating: C

Following her Netflix success with 2018’s apocalyptic thriller Bird Box, Sandra Bullock returns with another protector-survivor role in the thriller The Unforgivable, which opens in limited theatrical release November 24 before appearing on the streaming service starting December 10.

Bullock plays Ruth Spader, a woman freshly released from jail, trying to restart her life. She is determined, against her parole conditions, to find her only surviving family member, a younger sister who went into the foster care system at the age of five and has since been adopted.

The film — the sophomore feature from Germany’s Nora Fingscheidt (the Berlin prize winner System Crasher) — is adapted from a celebrated 2009 BBC three-part mini-series, Unforgiven, by Yorkshire writer-producer Sally Wainwright.

At various times, writers Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects and several Mission Impossible movies) and Scott Frank (The Queen’s Gambit) were attached to a remake with Angelina Jolie as a star, in what one imagines would be a more conventional thriller.

The current film, shot in a rainy undisguised Vancouver pretending to be Seattle (the Scotiabank tower stands out) has a distinctly 90s movie-of-the-week vibe. Part of it is a social issue movie about an ex-con trying to go straight, with passing shots of homeless tent villages, squalid halfway houses, and crowded buses.

The most high-budget element in the current production is the prestige cast: Viola Davis in a relatively small role as the woman who has moved into Ruth’s home, with Vincent D’Onofrio as her easy-going lawyer husband; Richard Thomas and Linda Emond as the middle-class parents who have adopted Ruth’s sister Katy (Aisling Franciosi), an emotionally sensitive piano prodigy who is recovering from a car accident she experienced on the day of Ruth’s release. Jon Bernthal (The Walking Dead) shows up as a co-worker and potential romantic interest at the fish plant where Ruth lands a job.

Bullock, stone-faced (the corners of her mouth don’t turn upward until past the 40-minute mark), routinely meets with rejection and hostility from the moment she’s released. So blank is Bullock’s expression that, when her parole officer asks her if she’s been using, you can see why he might think so.

PROUDLY SUPPORTS ORIGINAL-CIN

When she does finally break out of her shell during a meeting with her sister’s adoptive parents — who have done everything to erase the memory of Ruth from their daughter’s life — she goes from zero to raging, which involves some acting skill, though it feels like Bullock’s waving semaphore flags declaring Wary and Traumatized.

Though Bullock is deglamorized in her makeup-free face and thrift shop outfits, her character is still heroic. As well as being able to beat up people who try to steal her stuff at the halfway house, Ruth’s a prison-trained carpentry wiz.

She finds a second job with an NGO helping build a “community centre for the homeless.” (I suspect a shelter might be of more practical use). When Ruth gets really angry, she delivers an athletic beat down to a new drywall installation. This suggests Ruth’s mental state: she’s a cipher of social forces, a martyr, an example.

In the film’s attempts to create mystery and suspense, we’re subject to a lot of blurry fragments before we learn that, years before, the teenaged Ruth was convicted of the shooting death of a sheriff who was attempting to evict her and her five-year-old sister, Katharine, from their rural home after their father’s suicide. Whatever Ruth does in life, warns her parole officer, Vince (Rob Morgan) she will always be a despised “cop killer.”

That means more that just a bad reputation and being forced to eat lunch alone at the workplace cafeteria. There are plot elements here, which hew closely to the BBC original, that feel forcibly jammed into this film’s two-hour running time.

The weakest and most generic thriller element involves the two adult sons of the murdered policeman, the unstable Keith (Tom Guiry) and his more rational younger sibling, Steve (Will Pullen) who learn about Ruth’s release and are determined to get payback for their father’s death and their damaged lives.

There’s a sense that the film is attempting to navigate a sort of Atom Egoyan-like exploration of the ripple effects of trauma but it stumbles over a mishmash of a screenplay — the clumsy fragmentary flashbacks, the rushed climax and time-jumping, cross-cutting wind-up — none of which are improved by David Fleming and Hans Zimmer’s generic thriller score.

Thanks to its strong supporting cast, The Unforgiveable has some decent individual scenes. But it’s one of those thrillers that leaks credibility as it gains momentum, racing toward triteness.

The Unforgivable. Directed by Nora Fingscheidt. Written by Peter Craig, Hilary Seitz and Courtenay Miles, based on the TV series Unforgiven by Sally Wainwright. Starring Sandra Bullock, Vincent D’Onofrio, Jon Bernthal, Richard Thomas, and Viola Davis. Available in select theatres November 24 and on Netflix from December 10.