REVIEW: Remember Me

THE YEAR'S 2001

The best thing about Allen Coulter’s Remember Me is it’s unpredictability.  There is a sense of sadness and loss permeating through it, and the characters cope with the dud deals life gives them, as best as they can.  The year is 2001 -- and that is a spoiler.
 
The relationships are beautifully etched  — the most heartwarming being one between the angry young hero Tyler (Robert Pattinson) and his shy artist sister (Ruby Jerins).  His resentment is against his rich father (Pierce Brosnan), whom he blames for the death of his brother.

The girl he falls for, Ally (Emilie de Ravin), has had her life clouded by the murder of her mother that she witnessed as a child, and her father’s (Chris Cooper) over-protectiveness that stems from that incident.

Tyler had rubbed Ally’s father, a cop, the wrong way, and his roommate (a very annoying Tate Ellington) suggests that he befriend Ally and then dump her. But the two fall deeply in love, and Tyler finds some stability,  as his attitude towards his father remains hostile and bitter.

Pattinson has become a star and teen idol playing a brooding vampire in the Twilight series, and he wears melancholy around his shoulders like a cloak.  When he finds Ally, he makes the audience root for him, and the love is too strong and vital to pass without impending tragedy… and that, when it comes, is like a blow to the solar plexus.

The film, with its fine cast, is slow, elegiac and suffused with many shades of love… worth a look.