I'd never heard of this film before. You probably have never heard of it. All I could tell from looking at the DVD case was that it was a low budget thriller starring Lou Diamond Phillips and, be honest, that's not exactly a good indication of sterling quality, is it? Yet amongst all the flotsam floating on today's sea of crappy cinema, Never Forget is like a lifeboat. You can crawl into it and, for at 83 minutes at least, be safe and dry and have a pretty good time.
The story begins with a man (Lou Diamond Phillips) waking up in the middle of the woods. He's bleeding from his head and is hanging upside down from a tree, his foot caught in a rope snare. Upon extricating himself, he realizes he has no memory of who or where he is. All he has is a knife with the name Tom Martin on it and a wallet with a driver's license that identifies him as Frank Hill. Neither is much help when a guy named Andy (Kris Holden-Reid) shows up and points a gun at him. It seems that in these woods, there is a cabin and in that cabin, there are some dead bodies. Whether they were killed by Frank or by Andy, however, isn't at all clear.
This is a well made film and not just in the technical sense. Most movies nowadays, even the grotesquely horrible ones, are made with a basic level of mechanical competence. Never Forget exceeds that low standard by a good measure. There's some veritable skill at work here, from the camera work to the staging to the editing and just about every bit of filmmaking in between. Even the violence, which is frequently one of the weakest aspects of low budget movies, is well choreographed and well executed. Excellent use is made of the natural scenery and there are more than a few images that will make you pay attention.
To be truthful, the storytelling here is better than the story. When you get to the end you can't help but notice the filmmakers were cheating along way. Some of the things the characters do make no sense when it's finally revealed who and what they are. They were meant to keep the viewer guessing but not in a fair way. A character's actions need to be explained and the only explanation for some of the actions in this movie is "the filmmakers couldn't think of legitimate ways to sustain the mystery, so they just had the characters do things contrary to their nature in order to keep the audience off balance".
But the story isn't terrible. There's a neat theme running through it about how qualities like courage and cowardice don't have a moral dimension. For example, Frank is always portrayed as the more forceful and assertive personality without it ever being obvious, until the end, whether that demonstrates the virtue of the good guy or the strength of purpose belonging to the bad guy. Andy is weaker and more hesitant, but is that because he's a caring man plunged into a nightmare or because he's a deceitful, scheming worm?
Never Forget is about 85% Lou Diamond Phillips and Kris Holden-Reid on screen by themselves and they both do a great job pulling the viewer in and holding their attention, without ever resorting to exaggerated theatrics. These aren't the kind of performances that will win a lot of awards or draw a lot of attention. It's the kind of professional acting that elevates whatever material it takes on.
There's an ocean of video garbage out there, with more getting pumped into it every Tuesday of the year. Nice, little films like Never Forget are too often plopped into that stinking surf and drown, earning neither money nor praise for the folks who made them. All they can have is pride in creating something worthwhile. These people should feel that pride and you should reward them and yourself by watching this movie.
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