Remember Me (2010 film)

Plot

At New York City in 1991, Alyssa "Ally" Craig is waiting with her mother for the subway, when they are mugged by two young men, who shoot her mother after boarding the train.

Ten years later, Ally is a student at New York University, and lives with her father, Neil, a New York Police Department detective. Tyler Hawkins audits classes at NYU, and works at the university bookstore. He has a strained relationship with his businessman father, Charles, because his older brother, Michael, committed suicide years before. Charles ignores his youngest child, Caroline, of whom Tyler is protective against.

One night, with his roommate, Aidan, Tyler gets involved in somebody else's fight, and is arrested by Neil. Aidan calls Charles to bail Tyler out, but he does not stick around to have a conversation with his father. Aidan sees Neil dropping Ally off, realizing that she is his daughter. He approaches Tyler with the idea to get back at the detective by persuading him to sleep with and dump Ally. Tyler and Ally go to dinner, kiss at the end of the night, and continue seeing one another. While at Tyler's apartment, Aidan convinces the pair to go to a party, after which Ally is very drunk, and ends up crashing out. The following day, she and her father argue. Neil accuses her, and Ally flees to Tyler's apartment.

Caroline, a budding artist, is featured in an art show, and Tyler asks his father to attend the show. When he fails to show up, Tyler confronts him in a board room filled with people, which causes his father's frustration to boil over. Neil's partner recognizes Tyler with Ally on a train, so Neil breaks into Tyler's apartment, and confronts him. Tyler provokes Neil by confessing to Aidan's plan and his initial reason for meeting Ally, which forces Tyler to confess to Ally. She leaves and returns home. Aidan visits Ally at her father's home to explain that he is to blame, and Tyler is in love with her.

Caroline is bullied by classmates at a birthday party where they cut her hair off. Ally and Aidan visit Tyler's mother's apartment, where Caroline is sobbing. Tyler accompanies his sister back to school, and when her classmates tease her for her new haircut, Tyler turns violent, and ends up in jail. Charles is impressed that Tyler stood up for his sister, and they connect. Charles asks Tyler to meet with the lawyers at his office.

Tyler spends the night with Ally, and they reveal they love each other after making love. Charles takes Caroline to school. He calls Tyler to let him know this, and explains that he will be late. Tyler is happy that his father is spending time with Caroline. He tells Charles that he will wait in his office. He looks on Charles's computer, featuring a slideshow of pictures with Tyler, Michael, and Caroline when they were younger.

After Charles drops Caroline off at school, she sits in her classroom, where the teacher writes the date on the blackboard as September 11, 2001. Tyler looks out the window of his father's office, which is revealed to be located on the 101st floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Once the terrorist attacks begin, the rest of the family, Aidan and Ally, look at the towers before the camera pans over the rubble, showing Tyler's diary. In a voice-over of his diary, Tyler reveals to Michael that he loves him, and he forgives him for killing himself. Tyler is buried next to Michael.

Some time later, Caroline and Charles seem to have a healthy father-daughter relationship. Aidan, who has since gotten a tattoo of Tyler's name on his arm, is working hard in school, and Ally gets on the subway at the same spot where her mother was killed.

Cast

Premiere

The film premiered on March 1, 2010 at the Paris Theatre in New York City, and received its wide release on March 12, 2010. It is rated 12A in the UK and PG-13 in the United States.

Home release

Summit Entertainment announced the DVD and Blu-ray release of June 22, 2010.

Critical response

Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives the a rating of 27% based on 108 reviews. The site's consensus states, "Its leads are likeable, but Remember Me suffers from an overly maudlin script and a borderline offensive final twist." Metacritic gives it a score of 40 out of 100, based on reviews from 29 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".

Todd McCarthy gave the film a mixed review in Variety, writing "The modestly scaled film delivers some moving and affecting moments amid a preponderance of scenes of frequently annoying people behaving badly." Andrea Gronvall gave a similar assessment in The Chicago Reader, writing "Allen Coulter directed this morose and sluggish drama, which gets more mileage from Pattinson's anguished profile than from Will Fetters's thunderously overwritten screenplay." Derek Malcolm wrote in This Is London, "Decently shot and directed as it is, it lacks any real flame." Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter gave the film a positive review, stating the "scenes between Pattinson and de Ravin exude genuine charm." Honeycutt goes on to say that the score and cinematography brought "notable sparkle to this heartfelt drama." Roger Ebert generally liked the film, giving it three out of four stars and characterizing it as a "well-made movie. I cared about the characters. I felt for them. Liberate them from the plot's destiny, which is an anvil around their necks, and you might have something" but goes on to say it "tries to borrow profound meaning, but succeeds only in upstaging itself so overwhelmingly that its characters become irrelevant".

Jake Coyle of The Associated Press did not favor the film and said the "most pleasing thing about [the film] is its boldness. It may be affected, but [it] is at least aiming for an intriguing character study — a positive sign in the young career of Pattinson" whom he says steps away from "Twilight, apparently in search of his Five Easy Pieces or Rebel Without a Cause." Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a D+, calling it a "shameless contraption of ridiculously sad things befalling attractive people." Schwarzbaum was also critical of Pattinson's acting and the script. Wesley Morris of the Boston Globe gave the film a half star out of four, commenting that the film "crassly repurposes tragedy to excuse its cliches." Other critics also found the movie's invocation of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center offensive and exploitative, such as Lisa Kennedy of the Denver Post: "The finale manages to be tasteful and exploitative at the same time. It touts forgiveness while being mildly infuriating. Such is the danger of borrowing from the enormous to merely entertain. If that. Forgettable should be the last thing a movie touching on the events of 9/11 should be. Yet 'Remember Me' is just that." Elizabeth Wetizman of The New York Daily News also denounced the film's ending, writing, "There's no shame in exploring tragedy through art. But exploiting it to make your very ordinary movie feel more important? That's another story."

Box office

"Remember Me" debuted in fifth position at the box office, trailing "Alice in Wonderland," "Green Zone," "She's Out of My League," and "Shutter Island." It earned $8,089,139 during its opening weekend. By July 6, the film had amassed a total of $56,032,889 in box office revenue.

Soundtrack

The official Remember Me soundtrack was released on March 9, 2010. A score soundtrack was also released which was composed by Marcelo Zarvos. The movie consisted of 26 credited songs, while the soundtrack 14 of them, including songs by Sigur Rós, The Beta Band, Ani Difranco, Supergrass and National Skyline. A Pakistani song, Saason ki Mala Peh Simroon by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan was also heard in the movie when Tyler takes Alley on their first date at Gandhi Restaurant.