Remember Me
PG-13 (violence, sexual content, strong language, smoking); 108 min.
As a package pandering to members of the Rah Rah Rob Pattinson Fan Club, Remember Me showcases the Twilight hottie in all his zoned-out, sideburned, hair-tousled and chin-flexing glory.
Pattinson is placed in a romantic setting, gets to smoke, and plays tough, gallant and troubled. And if there are no fangs, Team Edward can still imagine them there.
But Pattinson's fussy, affected acting, his grab bag of screen mannerisms and a script that has him lurching between moony romantic and wild-eyed psychotic do nothing to suggest the dude has a prayer of a fangless career.
A more "adult" romantic melodrama that pushes the boundaries of how sexual you can get without earning an R rating, Remember Me smashes up against mental illness.
Pattinson plays Tyler, a morose, aimless and seemingly bipolar hunk who dotes on his much younger sister, mourns a dead brother, gets into fights just to feel something and dates a cop's daughter just to get back at the NYPD detective (Chris Cooper) who roughed him up.
But this girl (Emilie de Ravin) isn't to be trifled with. She's interested, even though he asks her out with his face all beaten up. She stays interested after seeing his violent temper and meeting his jerk workaholic dad (Pierce Brosnan) and needy little sister (Ruby Jerins).
But someday, he's going to cross paths with her dad, who will remember him. Someday he's going to find out why she never rides the subway -- 10 years before, in 1991, her mom was murdered right in front of her. And eventually, as a viewer, you'll do the math and figure out where this contraption is headed.
A saving grace here is Brosnan, finding his post-Bond niche not in musicals but in playing perfectly coiffed power-suited jerks. Director Allen Coulter made his mark with Hollywoodland, but unlike Brosnan, he hitched onto the Pattinson popularity express and brought nothing to the ride. The film's tone is all wrong, the pacing is dead and the veering among sex, sadness and sado-masochistic violence is enough to give you motion sickness. It's a bad movie.
