Return to Sender (2015)

** ½ out of ****

I have to admit a pre-existing bias going into this movie.... The star of “Return to Sender” is Rosamind Pike, and I found her so spellbindingly evil in “Gone Girl” that I could never, ever accept her as anything but a villain. In “Return to Sender” she is a victim, but eventually seems to completely lose her shit, so it ended up okay.

Pike plays Miranda, a driven ER nurse with aspirations of becoming a surgical nurse. She is successful but all alone in life, which worries her friends and her father. Dad is played by Nick Nolte, a longtime favorite of mine, and in this film he looks like an entrant in a Grizzly Adams lookalike contest and is his usual curmudgeonly self.

So Miranda's friends set her up on a blind date with “Kevin”, who is going to meet her at her house. When he shows up a bit early she lets him in and goes off to get ready. Unfortunately the man she let in was not Kevin, it was William (Shiloh Fernandez), a very disturbed man. In aa all-too-realistic and lengthy scene, William ends up raping Miranda in her kitchen and running away. Believe me, this scene is very hard to watch, and that's coming from a guy (someone in very little danger of ever being raped). I am willing to bet that it's much, much harder for any woman to stomach – it just seems so authentic.

William is captured and sent to prison, but Miranda can't stop thinking about the horror of the incident. It costs her an opportunity be become a surgical nurse as she'd hoped, as her hands now shake all the time. In an attempt to come to terms with the event, she starts to write to William in jail, and her letters are always returned. But after some time, he relents and agrees to see her, and she starts to visit him in prison. They even become friendly.

Throughout the middle portion of the film you feel a little confused. Has she lost her mind? Is she plotting revenge? Just what the heck could she be thinking? And when he is released and she allows him to come to her house to do outside work to “make amends” you become almost completely convinced she has simply lost her mind.

Pike is really very good in the lead role, though throughout I just kept expecting her to yank out a butcher knife and cut William's throat (a leftover of my feelings about her from “Gone Girl”). It made it hard for me to see her as a tremendously sympathetic character, so I'm going to go out on a limb and say that despite he excellent performance she is miscast. She even keeps the “Gone Girl” narrowed-eye look for most of the film, like she's plotting something the entire time.

Not to say she isn't.....

My favorite part of the movie was the performance of Nick Nolte, who I often wonder why he gets so few juicy roles. The guy is really excellent in everything, and he really knows what works best for him. The grumbling, growling old bear that flat-out hates taking shit from anyone, and he even adds a vulnerability here we don't often see from him. His pain over his daughter's plight and his personal gentleness come through and he is just plain likable. Everyone in the cast does a good job, but for me it was nice to see Nolte in a good role again.

Overall the movie isn't terribly compelling or thought provoking, but it is interesting enough to want to see it through to the end. And personally, I found the ending pretty satisfying.