John Dahl's Unforgettable plays around with a trippy high concept premise in which people's memories can be accessed by using an experimental, controversial drug. Ray Liotta plays the troubled Doctor whose wife has been recently murdered. He desperately reaches out to the scientist (Linda Fiorentino) who synthesized the compound, and the two set out to use it unofficially, in order to retain his wife's dying moments, see them for himself and establish who her killer is. The serum takes its toll on his already stressed mind though, and soon he's questioning his own reality, his trust levels towards those around him dropping considerably. Director Dahl is beyond proficient when it comes to thrillers, usually taking on crime pieces with a noirish vibe. Here he tries his hand at science fiction, coexisting with a classic whodunit narrative, and the result is quite good. Liotta relies on the information that his detective friend (Peter Coyote) gives him, and combines it with the knowledge he absorbs from his deceased wife's brain, beginning to piece the puzzle together. There's also a troublesome detective played by Christopher Mcdonald he must deal with, and a violent thug (Kim Coates) involved as well. Liotta is usually tough, capable and would normally be found playing one of the two cops, but the doctor on the run without a lot of tactical skill suits him and allows the guy some work other than just cops or psychos. Watch for work from David Paymer, Kim Cattrall, William B. Davis, Callum Keith Rennie and Garwin Sanford as well. The premise may be too far-fetched for some folks, but for others with imagination it'll be a blast. It's also fairly violent and graphic, which may seem gratuitous for such a cerebral outing, but I find it gives it a stylistic edge and raises the stakes, just like Total Recall. Great flick. Not Total Recall, I mean this one. Well Total Recall too, obviously. Yeesh.

Linda Fiorentino has played a couple of self-absorbed seductresses, in "Jade" and "The Last Seduction", and she was extremely good, especially in that last, semi-comic role as an exploitative nympho. Here, she's a scientist investigating the transfer of memory by means of fluid extraction from the brain one the donor into the arm of the receiver. She's pretty good here too, and it was a surprise because she'd seemed made for the more treacherous roles. No kidding. As the principled doctor here, she's sometimes frightened and often wide-eyed with bemusement. Not exactly Alice in Wonderland but not Selene either.

Ray Liotta is the medical examiner whose pregnant wife has been murdered and he begins to self administer the serum in order to recapture the experiences of the murder victim. It leads to more than he bargained for. It puts all sorts of unbearable strain on his heart and he undergoes all the emotions associated with being murdered. (Evidently, your life flashes before your eyes as you expire.) It's an interesting premise. I wonder if it wasn't inspired by a controversial experiment done in the late 50s or early 60s (I'm too lazy to look it up) involving flatworms and a Y-shaped maze. The experimenters trained a flatworm to find food at the end of the maze, then they chopped up the flatworm and fed it to a second flatworm in a kind of Planaria pate, and the second flatworm learned the maze more quickly than controls.

The premise is full of promise but the story is knee-capped by its obvious desire to become just another action thriller with blood splattering all over the walls and pokers bashing in heads and Ray Liota taking the drug and writhing all over the floor like Jeykll turning into Hyde.

The story is sometimes confusing too because, at times, Liota's own flashbacks are interpolated into the flashbacks of a couple of murder victims, so it's hard to tell whose memory (or insight) we're witnessing. Too bad it's so sloppily done.

It ends with a monumental explosion and a house afire and Liota trying to rescue an unconscious body and a tape recording at the same time, while Fiorentino and a gorgeous Kim Cattral watch helplessly. At the final fade, Liota gets to spend an indefinite amount of time playing with his two cute little girls in such sunshine as the Seattle climate allows.

Ray Liotta and Linda Fiorentino - if those names ring a bell or make you ecstatic with joy, you probably saw a few of their outputs (with Linda it was mostly in the 90s). Now she is in this but her character has to be a bit ... tame and while helpful in one sense, also blocking our main character in some ways too. So the main focus of this, is not a love story but a murder mystery. As such I would think that quite a few watching it now, are savvy enough to see through most things. You could call it predictable.

So while you may not know the exact reasons or backgrounds of why things happened the way they did, you can draw your own conclusions which mostly will be right. Great actors overall make this more than worthwhile though. Watch this and enjoy it for the "romp" that it is - with some interesting Science Fiction ideas concerning the human brain. Never mind the flaws and coincidences if you can, to enjoy it as good as you can.