"Remember Me" is clear proof of the wonders a good filmmaker can work on a project that a large cross-section of the audience would otherwise dread seeing. Director Allen Coulter gets a solid lead performance out of Robert Pattinson, the dreamy vampire brooder from the "Twilight" movies who stars here as a rebellious college student in love with a classmate (Emilie De Ravin) who is just as damaged and emotionally fragile as he is.
It doesn't look like it from some of the commercials, but this is not the New York version of Edward Cullen and Bella Swan. Gone are the long, lingering shots of a beautiful young man and beautiful young woman tediously staring at each other while bad alt-rock plays on the soundtrack. In their place are two real characters dealing with real issues and coming together in an emotionally honest way.
Coulter worked similar magic a few years back with the movie "Hollywoodland," getting the best performance out of Ben Affleck in his entire career as the late "Superman" actor George Reeves. I like the way he challenges his actors. He knows that they can clearly hold the screen in close-up. But he goes deep, demands a lot, and maintains a certain measure of authenticity that makes you buy the stories as they are happening.
"Remember Me" is a film about the struggles people face after dealt with great tragedy. Pattinson's Tyler Hawkins has never been the same since his older brother, Michael, committed suicide six years earlier. Tyler found him, hanging from a rope, and he has come to place a lot of the blame on the shoulders of his self-absorbed father (Pierce Brosnan).
At the same time, De Ravin's Ally still bears the emotional scars of having witnessed her mother gunned down a decade earlier when she was just 11. She lives with her cop father, Neil (Chris Cooper), who has not allowed himself to move on and instead focuses on two things: his job and keeping Ally safe. All the more sweet the revenge Tyler and his roommate Aidan (Tate Ellington) cook up after Neil jails them both for an alley fight. Romance Ally, get under Neil's skin, then dump her. Tyler, of course, falls for her. And there is the inevitable ticking clock set to go off when she finds out.
"Remember Me" works because the chemistry of the cast works. Because the film is not some jive romantic comedy, which Hollywood can't seem to execute anymore, there is no jokiness to the story at all. Coulter knows just the right notes to play, skipping between the blush of new love and the pain of life's messy loose ends that both main characters were dealing with before they came together.
You actually want to see these two end up together. You also want to take Tyler's little sister Caroline (Ruby Jerins), who he is fiercely protective of, into your arms and protect her against the ridicule she faces at school for being a shy, sensitive artist-type. You want to smack Brosnan's Charles Hawkins on the back of the head and tell him to listen to what his family really needs. This is a movie in which you actually invest some emotion into the story and the people in it, a rare thing nowadays.
The whole thing builds to a surprisingly bold and rather gutsy climax that goes against the conventional wisdom of safe Hollywood storytelling. This film takes a chance late with its characters and, quite frankly, with its audience. I give it major points for doing so. The ending worked because I didn't feel the filmmakers had overly manipulated viewer sensitivities for the previous 90 or so minutes. "Remember Me" is worthy of remembrance and rates a very strong 8 out of 10. (T. Durgin)
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