Return to Sender

Released: 2015

MPAA rating: R

Running time: 1 hr. 35 mins.

Rosamund Pike follows up a turn as a manipulating, vindictive spouse in "Gone Girl" with this turn as a small-town nurse going through a traumatic time in her life.

Miranda (Pike) is getting ready for a blind-date when a man shows up at her front door, presumably said blind-date.  She lets him in and is brutally raped in her kitchen.

The assailant is quickly captured, arrested and convicted and is now in prison as she picks up the pieces of her life.  As part of her recovery, she decides to start writing him

letters in prison, which he does not accept (thus the title).  As the movie progresses, we start to see the cold, calculating woman she is beneath the friendly small-town girl

exterior.  There is a subplot where she learns to become friendly with her father's German Shepherd, which is also a metaphor for the relationship with her attacker.  As the

third act unfolds, her true revenge plot begins to reveal itself.  Pike does a nice job showing the many sides of this woman's personality, but my problem with the movie is this:

The character is not at all likeable.  It's quite an accomplishment for the filmmakers to take a woman who was brutally raped and make her a very unlikeable, unsympathetic

character, but they sure pull it off.  The middle part of the movie just didn't do it for me.  The more we learn of her, the less we like her and that is not a great recipe for a

revenge drama. Nick Nolte, as her father, brings some much needed humanity to the movie, but not enough to save it.  He doesn't have many scenes, but when he is on screen,

he really is the only character you care about.  I had higher hopes for this one. 

Grade: C-