Return to Sender (2015)

So much average

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

hyped garbage

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Miranda Wells (Rosamund Pike) is a hospital nurse. Her friends set her up on a blind date. She finds William Finn (Shiloh Fernandez) on her door step and assumes him to be her date. She lets him in and he rapes her. The police later catches him. She is told that her rape has made it hard to sell her house. Her hands start shaking and she can't advance to be a surgical nurse. Her nice persona changes and she writes a letter to William in prison. It is sent back with Return to Sender. Mitchell Wells (Nick Nolte) is her father and Nancy (Camryn Manheim) is her best friend co-worker.Fouad Mikati's directions are only TV movie level. It's a waste of cinematic level talents of the cast. I have no complaint about the cast but it doesn't rise up to their level. It's also not comparable to Lifetime movies or anything of that sort. It is really disconcerting to see talents wasted this way. One of my pet peeves is the metallic echo when they speak to each other over the prison phones. It's one of the wrong choices that keep this movie down. It's too static with much of the time spent in that prison visiting booth. Any shocking descent is flattened by that stationary camera work. By the time he gets out, the movie is two thirds over and I stop caring about the rest. There is an obvious twist that is done much better in Hard Candy. This would be a good Twilight Zone or a horror TV episode. It's not cinematic enough to be theatrical.

This is the first time I've written a review and don't be fooled I like a good rant. This is a deep review... I honestly cannot understand all these poor ratings and a previous comment "why did she kill the dog?" ... Really?! I shouldn't have to explain but clearly I do... she slowly poisoned her dads dog testing how much she could give it without killing it. I mean really, how hard is that? Anyway that annoyance aside, the rape scene was brutal, full on and much more graphic than we wanted it to be, it shocked you, it was meant to. Don't dumb down the rest of the film and Rosamund Pike's performance because you didn't like being shown something horrifying and REAL. I have to say unless you have been through any kind of abuse yourself, you would think this movie and the acting "wooden" "unnatural" and blah blah blah... I'm not saying it's perfect, there's some dodgy camera work and uncomfortable acting mainly from Shiloh Fernandez but cut the guy some slack he was playing a rapist. He's human, just like this film is. In the end you should feel cold, just like she did.

Fouad Mikati directs and Patricia Beauchamp and Joe Gossett write this slow burn drama that sadly never resorts to anything of note. It stars Rosamund Pike, Shiloh Fernandez and Nick Nolte. Music is by Daniel Hart and cinematography by Russell Carpenter.A small town nurse is raped and takes the decision to befriend the rapist while he's in prison. Is it a way of exorcising her demons? Or something sinister?You can see and feel that there's a real good film here trying to get out, a meditation on a number of things that only victims of heinous crimes can truly understand. There's interesting observations on sociopathy, fractured family values and loneliness, but in spite of the sterling efforts of Pike to make it work, it's constructed so poorly, too often wearisome, and it cheats by not paying off on the slow- burn approach. The final revelation only makes you realise that it has taken an hour and half of film to achieve what American Mary did in 20 minutes! Add in that Nolte is utterly wasted and that Fernandez simply isn't strong enough for the role (he's the guy that isn't Joaquin Phoenix), and you got one messy movie that's best avoided. 5/10

I saw the trailer for this film last year and I thought hey, that reminds me a lot of Gone Girl. Of course it's slightly different, for example, Gone Girl is written better. But it has similarities, like Rosamund Pike. Her character seems to be Amy from Gone Girl - again! I've read it a million times online and I can now say it myself, the plot of Return to Sender is pretty standard. I don't even usually watch movies where the two main themes are rape and revenge, because they tend to go the same way over and over again. Return to Sender has it's differences, mostly the character of Miranda, who I'm going to talk about later. But the thing is those little details don't matter that much when the plot has been repeated million times. The character, Miranda is interesting in a lot of ways. She seems likable, but it's hard to say why. She has friends and she's a nurse, so clearly there's something nice about her. There also seems to be something off about her. She seems to be very careful about few things. She seems very distant to the viewer. When she starts visiting the rapist, she seems even more distant. We see what makes her go to him, but we still don't know the exact reason. Of course we can guess it, because it's easy to expect that, but still it's very confusing for a moment. The thing about Miranda is that she seems to be this nice nurse but you can't help but feel there's something weird about her. Trust that instinct. But that's what makes her character more interesting - except that she's now too close to Amy. If Miranda had been played by any other actress, maybe that connection wouldn't be so easy to make. Of course she is good at playing this kind of characters. Rosamund Pike is good at being weirdly and calmly scary. And the movie is timed very well. It's not exactly a long film, but the weird relationship between Miranda and William kept going for a while, so I almost thought I had figured the movie out all wrong. Well, I wasn't wrong, but making that even that one small moment longer made it feel like wait a minute, what is going on? That's one important thing about structure - you change something in the usual timed structure of the film and it feels weird, because we are so used to that typical tempo.What's mostly wrong about it is the timing. People weren't over Gone Girl when this one came out, so obviously everyone is starting to compare it to Gone Girl in their heads. And comparing to Gone Girl, Return to Sender doesn't stand a chance.Return to Sender is worth a watch, if you haven't seen too many "rape & revenge" type of movies, or if you really like them. If you're bored with them, then it's not for you.