Remember Me Review

Posted by Jeremy Thomas on 03.14.2010

Carry on, my wayward son...

Directed by: Allen Coulter
Written by: Will Fetters

Starring:
Robert Pattinson - Tyler Hawkins
Emilie de Ravin - Ally Craig
Tate Ellington - Aidan Hall
Ruby Jerins - Caroline Hawkins
Pierce Brosnan - Charles Hawkins
Chris Cooper - Neil Craig
Lena Olin - Diane Hirsch
Gregory Jbara - Les Hirsch
Martha Plimpton - Helen Craig
Kate Burton - Janine
Peyton R. List - Samantha



Running Time: 113 minutes
Rated PG-13 for violence, sexual content, language and smoking.

Robert Pattinson has been thrust into the limelight over the last two years. The young actor began his theatrical career in a big way; after a performance that was cut from the theatrical release of 2004's Vanity Fair, he found his first official film role as Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Soon after, the actor beat out over three thousand other young hopefuls to become Edward Cullen in the insanely successful Twilight series, and his name was etched into Hollywood's permanent memory. Pattinson is one of the few actors for whom nearly every theatrical film he has been featured in to date has been a blockbuster; with that of course comes the risk of being typecast. As a result, the twenty-three year old has looked for roles in which he can find ways to break out of the teen fantasy stereotype. His first was 2008's Little Ashes in which he played surrealist painter Salvador Dali. 2009 followed with a role in British dramedy How To Be, for which he earned a Best Actor award from the Strasbourg International Film Festival. His latest non-franchise film, Remember Me, is a romantic drama co-starring Emilie de Ravin, Chris Cooper, Pierce Brosnan and Lena Olin.

The film begins in 1991 in New York, where an eleven-year-old Ally Craig is present for the random mugging and shooting death of her mother Helen (Plimpton) on a subway platform. Her father Neil (Cooper), an NYPD police officer, is left to take care of her. Ten years later, Ally (de Ravin) is attending NYU and still living with Neil in Queens. Also attending NYU is another young person who's been touched by death in Tyler Hawkins (Pattinson). The suicide death of his older brother Michael six years earlier, on his twenty-second birthday, has shattered his family. His father (Brosnan) is a businessman who is emotionally distant from his children; his mother (Olin) has started another life with a new husband but still takes care of her children. Tyler's little sister Caroline (Jerins) is a talented young artist. Tyler is clearly still affected by his brother's death; he has no real aim in life and mostly spends his time at a book store or hanging out with his roommate Aidan (Ellington) and smoking.

When he finds himself breaking up a fight, he runs afoul of Neil and ends up in jail. A turn of events puts Tyler and Ally in each other's paths and they begin to fall in love. Their relationship finds itself tested by the threat of Neil learning that his daughter is dating a man he threw in jail; Tyler's disaffected nature and tumultuous relationship with his father throws a few kinks in as well. The two lovers find themselves challenged to see if they can fight the circumstances and tragedies that threaten to tear them apart.

Remember Me is the first screenplay from Hollywood newcomer Will Fetters. Fetters has a few other projects in the works already, but here in his first time to the dance he certainly lays claim to an ambitious goal. The film seeks to portray Tyler as a wounded youth, lost in the misery of a brother whose death scarred him and left him spinning without a direction. There are elements of the film that obviously bring to mind a film like James Dean's iconographic Rebel Without A Cause. But where that classic attempts to be a social statement on the loss of morality in the young adults of the 50's and a criticism of the way they were parented, Fetters instead decides to focus on a message: whatever tragedy you've suffered, you should take what is good in your life and hold onto it. Cherish those moments, because they could be taken away from you at any point.

Does he deliver the message persuasively? Perhaps. It is unfortunate that he does so in such a manipulative way though. In crafting the story, Fetters relies on several contrivances that it threatens the credibility of the whole film. He maneuvers the characters together in such a way that can only happen on the silver screen. When Tyler first sees Ally in his global politics class, it's clear that there's something there, despite the fact that they haven't seemed to ever share a single word between them. You know that they will be getting together the second that Neil arrives on the scene to arrest Tyler for interceding in a fight. It's only how they will get together that is the question, which comes in the form of another coincidental twist of fate. From there the plot moves along with a moderate amount of seamlessness, until yet another happenstance throws a monkey wrench in.

All of these plot devices, as contrived as they are, pale in view of the climax of the story. The event that takes place serves a particular purpose in driving the message home, but it seems outlandishly crass and unnecessary. There are a thousand other ways that the movie could have ended with the same message, but Fetters and director Allen Coulter seem more interested in kicking us in the gut to make emotional impact. It is a tactless move, and one that Coulter films in order to be a big reveal. Anyone who has been paying attention will see it coming a mile away, but perhaps will dismiss it as a direction they couldn't possibly go in. Unfortunately, they do indeed and the quick resolution offered after does little to stop us from walking away feeling like we've been manipulated in the cruelest way imaginable. It's a cheap move and Coulter, the director behind the underrated Hollywoodland and several episodes of The Sopranos, should know better than to go that route.

It is an especially unfortunate thing that the script and direction fails when one considers the effort the cast put into the film. Robert Pattinson is an actor who has been in some very successful films, but has never been considered much of a critical success. As Tyler, he does a fairly good job at trying to be taken seriously as an actor. There is torment behind his eyes, and while he tries to hold onto the good things in his life like Ally and his sister, he's deeply wounded and is lashing out at the world. Pattinson carries this role well, although his accent could use a fair amount of work. He has a lot of chemistry with de Ravin, best known from ABC's Lost where she plays Claire Littleton. The young actress plays Ally well enough as a girl who tries to be a free spirit—she always orders dessert first—but has her own scars that haven't quite healed. The supporting cast is all strong as Cooper and Brosnan play their father roles as flawed but sympathetic people who have lost perspective with their children, and young Ruby Jerins does well as the young Caroline. She inspires a visual comparison to Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense, and while she doesn't handle her role as well as he did it's not as demanding of one and she does fine.

This film wants desperately to be an important film, deeper than the standard Hollywood tear-jerker. Coulter and the cast do this by making us care about the characters and invest in them emotionally. Cinematographer Jonathan Freeman shoots the film very efficiently and cleanly, allowing the acting to shine rather than camera tricks and Marcelo Zarvos's score is evocative without being overdone. The only time these become flaws is in those final moments that threaten to destroy the entire film, as the camera pans become overly dramatic and the music swells as if to say "here it comes." And come it certainly does, in the worst possible way. Some audiences will be offended, and others will be affected. Either way, they will get there as a result of the machinations of the story, which is very much the wrong way to do so.

The 411: Remember Me is being marketed largely behind the power of Robert Pattinson's drawing power, and the film shows that he may well have hope as an actor after the Twilight franchise is finished. Pattinson's performance as Tyler Hawkins may not be the most compelling performance on-screen so far this year, but it shows that there is something more to the actor than sparkling in the sunlight and mooning over Kristen Stewart. The flaw is in the manipulative nature of the script by Will Fetters and the heavy-handed way in which director Allen Coulter brings it to the screen. The message is lost amidst a pointlessly exploitive finale and manufactured plot twists that substitute shock value for true emotional impact. The solid acting from Pattinson, Emilie de Ravin, Pierce Brosnan, Chris Cooper and Ruby Jerins fervently tries to hold the movie together, but they never really succeed. Remember Me wants to convey a deep message, but it's too busy trying to be a tear-jerker to accomplish the goal.

Final Score:  4.5   [ Poor ]