Unforgettable is a half-effective movie, one which works best when functioning as a wildly imaginative B-thriller, and far less effectively when trying to actually generate sympathy for Dr. Krane and his emotional anguish. Directed by John Dahl, who has a number of equally solid thrillers under his belt, there's an over-the-top trashiness to Krane literally reliving gruesome murders in order to solve them that Dahl pulls off with flair. Yet, the electricity of these sequences directly oppose the times when the film tries to switch gears to maudlin sentiment about Mary's death and the increasingly strained relationship Krane has with his young daughters Cara (Caroline Elliott) and Lindy (Colleen Rennison), who are now in the custody of Mary's sister Kelly (Kim Cattrall).

At the core of the film's schizophrenia is Liotta, who, like Dahl, is good for the thriller material and bad for the sentiment. When Dr. Krane realizes the potential of Dr. Briggs' serum, there's an edginess to him. He's great in portraying the way his wife's death haunts him, eating away at his patience and warmth. Once he's started taking the drug -- against Dr. Briggs' wishes -- he's all sweaty determination, his skin pale and a haunted look in his eyes as he endures other people's traumatic, violent deaths. Yet, the scenes with his kids have a coldness to them, and when Kelly comes to pick them up, he seems more steely than heartbroken, invested in fully clearing his name more as a mission than as healing.

Although the material on the page could've read either way, Dahl takes the story's ridiculous memory-swapping conceit and plays it in capital letters. From one of the victims, Dr. Krane gleans that the convenience store shooter is Eddie Dutton (Kim Coates), a truly soulless bug-eyed punk who blows people away as casually as one throws trash in the garbage. As sseen through the eyes of the victim (Jenafor Ryane), the conveience store killing is almost comic book in its level of splattering gore, with bodies flying through the air and the victim maybe watching her brain matter hitting the anti-shoplifting mirrors before she expires. Krane, meanwhile, experiences all of it as if he were the victim (the script adds a nice touch that "sensory cues" help bring up the transfered memories, prompting Krane to go to the crime scenes). These sequences live up to the movie's goofy, near sci-fi premise -- the one thing that makes the movie stand out.

At the same time, both Dahl and Bill Geddie's screenplay fail to explore plenty of other, arguably more interesting ideas around the fringes of the story. The convenience store victim is an art store student, and when Krane goes to the police sketch artist to try and get a picture made, he finds he doesn't need the artist's help. Sadly, this idea is just a throwaway so that Krane can get a match on the police computer. It's also only a few scenes later that Krane injects himself with Dutton's memories, which leaves the viewer expecting that injecting the experiences of a psychopath might have some lingering effects on Krane, but the movie never explores it. As Briggs, Fiorentino is wasted as a likable but ultimately passive character, and I doubt many will have trouble separating the red herring from the real killer on first sight. As the film draws to a close, both Geddie and Dahl struggle with the morality of what Krane really wants to do to feel satisfied, and so they twist their way around to an ending that has it both ways.

The Blu-ray
Kino Lorber brings Unforgettable to Blu-ray with more artistic artwork than the MGM DVD had, but not necessarily art that really evokes what the film is about, featuring Liotta and Fiorentino's faces in the smoke from a pistol. The rest, aside from a couple of photos on the back, uses Kino Lorber's standardized black-and-white template. The single-disc Blu-ray release comes in a standard, non-eco Viva Elite Blu-ray case, and there is no insert.

The Video and Audio
As with most of Kino's MGM-licensed titles, the 1.85:1 1080p AVC presentation on this disc is pretty strong, featuring generally impressive color, very strong detail, and a noticeable grain structure. That grain structure looks a touch harsh at times, with a little gray speckled into it, possibly an effect of light sharpening, and some minor print damage is present throughout, but the picture tends to look natural and well-saturated for a film not likely to have recieved much attention from the studio since their DVD release. A DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track also sounds pretty good, with the movie's somewhat psychedelic memory sequences providing ample opportunity for the film to hit the viewer with loud and distorted sound effects. Music and dialogue also sound pretty good. English captions for the deaf and hard of hearing are also included.

The Extras
Kino Classics has dug up a minor, yet oddly impressive amount of archival material as extras for this disc that were not on the MGM DVD from 2001. The first is an overall making-of featurette (5:45), which is basically a trumped up trailer with some brief soundbytes from the cast in it. This is followed by a series of literal "soundbytes" filmed for the EPK with Ray Liotta (2:55), Linda Fiorentino (2:00), Peter Coyote (2:02), Kim Cattrall (0:59), Christopher McDonald (1:10), John Dahl (2:25) and Martha de Laurentiis (0:57). The briefness of these clips and the fact that they were filmed for the same promotional featurette limits the amount of information to be gained here, with each actor recounting their own character arc, but they're more informative than the finished featurette. More lengthy is a chunk of unedited B-roll (20:36), which in its own way, provides a fascinating look at the making of a film from a time before cameras were always filming stuff for home video releases.

The disc is rounded out by an original theatrical trailer.

Conclusion
Unforgettable is actually kind of memorable, but less for its effectiveness and more for its missed potential. If the resolution of the movie's thriller story were a bit more twisty and engaging, then the movie would probably merit a recommendation, but both the weak reveal and the movie's ineffective focus on the dramatic aspects of an inherently silly story ultimately hamper the movie. Kino's disc, on the other hand, is impressive, packing a fine presentation and more supplements than the DVD. Rent It.