The Unforgivable review: Sandra Bullock can’t save her big Netflix movie

In a myriad of ways, Netflix’s The Unforgivable, the slow-moving redemption film from director Nora Fingscheidt, resembles Karyn Kusama’s DestroyerWithout the noir elements. The film’s protagonist revisits a mistake — an innocent person’s death through flashbacks to the devastating event — in this case, a cop who died at the hands of Ruth Slater (Sandra Bullock). When the memories arrive in Slater’s mind, they stab like shards of glass, each time revealing more details surrounding the tragedy and inflicting more pain on the rememberer. Unlike Destroyer, unfortunately, The unforgiveableIt lacks any narrative tension.

Three paths are taken in the film: Slater, who has spent 20 years behind bars, is paroled by Vincent Morgan (Rob Morgan) for good conduct. He sets her up in a flophouse in Seattle’s Chinatown, with a job in a fish-packing place. Slater, despite her conditions for parole, goes to search for her adult sister Katherine (Aisling Frenciosi), who lives in Seattle’s Chinatown with her foster parents. She has no recollection of her childhood. Unbeknownst to Slater, the sons of the cop she killed — Steve (Will Pullen) and Keith (Tom Guiry) — have heard about her recent release, and they’re out for revenge.

A deep ensemble was led by Bullock (transformative), Unforgiveable It moves in a monotonous pace and does not have the emotional depth or urgency required to tell a story of redemption that will make the audience want its victim. Kidman’s version. Destroyer, Bullock’s appearance oscillates from strained and ragged in present-day scenes, to bright, in-full-make-up in sequences set in the past. Bullock depicts Slater as being terse and strained at his jaw, but always on the edge of eruption. Slater keeps a low profile. She’s often guarded — she’s served her time, but her reputation as a cop-killer will always follow her around. It’s why when a coworker at the fish-packing plant, the kind, generous Blake (Jon Bernthal, still sporting his King RichardAlthough she falls in love with her mustache, she seems initially hesitant to accept any kindness shown her. Slater doesn’t believe she deserves redemption.

The second half is sustained by her longing to visit her sister. The film pretty closely follows the beats of Sally Wainwright’s three-part British miniseries Forgiveness is not an option, on which it’s based: Slater eventually ventures back to the farmhouse where she purportedly shot the cop, only to find it now occupied by lawyer John Ingram (Vincent D’Onofrio), his wife Liz (Viola Davis), and their two sons.

Image courtesy of Netflix

Where Forgiveness is not an option has an all-white cast, Netflix’s version gives Fingscheidt the chance to interrogate Slater’s privilege through Liz’s frank grilling. Slater complains that no one will let her see her sister, but she’s a white woman, released after killing a cop, when someone Black would’ve been killed before making it to jail. Adding insult to injury, Liz’s husband John decides, pro-bono, to help reunite Slater with her sister, in another form of privilege. John would have done the exact same thing if Slater were a Black cop-killer.

Unfortunately, these brief moments of self-awareness are all that make this film stale. Both D’Onofrio and Davis are relegated to side characters, along with the film’s seemingly central revenge plot. Steve and Keith stalk Slater outside of her work, but their danger isn’t felt.

Nor is Keith’s descent into rage. While he begins the film as a nice let-bygones-be-bygones sorta fella, he’s soon consumed by hatred for Slater. The inciting infraction that causes Keith to turn isn’t altogether believable — it’s innocuous, in fact, a failing of the script. And Guiry’s overwrought performance, an assemblage of facial tics and jitters, doesn’t give the film any additional weight. Keith, Slater, and Katherine are all wracked by trauma in their own ways, but it all bobs along at the surface, adding little in sustenance to the film’s tepid drama.

Photo: Kiimberley French/Netflix

But The unforgiveable’s central shortcoming is how hard it sells Slater as unforgivable. In a sense, Bullock’s star persona should mitigate the problem. Can Bullock be considered the bad guy? For her part, the beguiling actress gives a spirited turn: The push and pull between her repressed rage, an anger strewn across her face, and a few real outbursts — one occurring when she meets her sister’s foster parents — can certainly rein in a waning attention span.

But in a role where the actress is stripped of all her charming qualities, reduced to a privileged murderer, even her previous relationship with the audience can’t fill those gaps. So viewers are stuck with a revenge plot without vigor, and a protagonist so unlikable, it’s difficult to root for her, making the film’s nearly two-hour runtime an exercise in endurance. It’s too late for a late-movie twist that recasts Slater as an incarnation of the sacrificial lamb, instead of as a villain.

Above the narrative fatThe unforgivable It could have been a half-hour shorter. And with talented actors like Davis left in thankless parts, this film wastes valuable opportunities to shine. Guillermo Navarro’s photography sometimes relies on ghastly orange tones. The soundscape — complete with a mix of sirens and high-pitched ringing, which accompanies every flashback — is too on-the-nose to be acute. Fingscheidt’s The unforgivableIt has all the elements to make a compelling redemption story. But it’s indefensible how much it wastes such talents.

The unforgivableNetflix launches Dec. 10,