Return to Sender (2005)

First of all let me start with that i am not a supporter of the death penalty so you don't believe this would reflect on my rating.Spoilers. I gave this movie a low rating, because it's characters behaviors make no sense, no sense at all. Let me start with the female prisoner on death row. Let's go right into her shoes and speak in her voice, let us choose to say "I": Year back, in a car accident, i caused my sisters blindness and made it impossible for her, to ever have children. I feel guilty. I deserve to suffer. I deserve to pay. She hates me and rightly so. It so happens i am confused with someone who has abducted and murdered a child. I have been sentenced and will die on the electric chair.Do you buy this? I don't. Then perhaps you buy this: But i happen to know that my sister has abducted the child to keep it for herself. That child is still alive and i am the only one who knows. If i die, at least my sister i made suffer so much can be a happy mother. Okay let's say i am buying this. Let's say i find no way to commit suicide because of my deep guilt. I am simply to stupid to kill myself and spent years and years waiting to go to the electric chair. But i don't tell my lawyer to quiet trying to safe my life, appealing to the governor for instance, because that would make to much sense.Okay, let's stretch this a little further. Let's say I KNOW what's going on. I know that my sister and her husband have abducted that child. I want my sister to be happy with that child and i keep my mouth shut. Let them think i abducted that child, yeah, with my death, no one will know. Do you buy this? Can guilt be that blinding that i could forgive a sister, a child abductor and therefore an even bigger monster than the accused? I don't by into this a second.But let's say i do. Now there this guy (main character) visiting me. I want my sister to forgive me (why would i want my sister to forgive, if i don't even forgive myself?!?!) so i give that guy a letter for my sister. Why do i give that guy a letter for my sister, a sister that has vanished from the face of the earth (for her own good, as i must believe), why do i make him bringing her in the spotlight most likely, with the media so much interested in me and my affairs (something that never happens in the movie but this woman should fear of course), would i do that, no i would'nt i would want her to be forgotten. And the guy goes digging of course, because i send him digging.My lawyer should have gone digging also, but luckily my lawyer is stupid, she doesn't know how find my sister, but this guy does. Why do i believe this guy can, were even my lawyer can't?I could go on forever. The story of this movie total BS. And i hate it for it. I hate it, because there is a great, great story buried here in a totally screwed up screenplay. Even worse, this story has no moral spine. What is it about? Is it about guilt and paying, about guilt and paying over price, is it about redemption, about justice? A story needs a single moral core that makes you feel strongly. If you wanna know what i am talking about, watch "A Simple Plan" you can feel it in EVERY minute and it will give you that good old catharsis. This one, it will leave you confuse and empty :/Three stars for the acting and good atmospheric direction. For the story, well, one of the cases were writing must dump his screenplay and start FRESH at the drawing board. All elements are in place. There are just to many of them. Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite. Gee, i HATE laziness!

First of all, I liked this movie. Connie Nielsen, Adain Quinn and Kelly Preston are all terrific actors (especially Nielsen, who's been a favorite of mine since Gladiator) and all do supreme justice to their roles. That said, I didn't know much about this movie (nothing actually) when I rented it and was very disappointed to find that it was just another message movie which told us, the ignorant, just how evil capital punishment really is. The crowds at the prison just before the execution were all stupid redneck types shouting obscene comments. Nowhere did you see a Mike Ferrell type and his equally moronic crazies. Also, many of the comments made by the actors were about as subtle as a sledgehammer. I wish Hollywood would go back to making movies that tell a story and quit trying to sell their left-wing agendas.

it's a movie that brings out the human nature of the man,which is trying hardly to rile on real fact for the immersion of the truth in order to triumph over the possible bad part coexisting in everyone of us ,part which it's revealed into the very start of the movie.during the whole duration of the movie,the watcher comes to serious and powerful feelings regarding the human condition among the others which just look like some little pure things in comparison with the inmate Charlotte and the man who does almost everything to apply for her's "inguiltyness" in which he doesn't believe in 100% . the final is on the same scale with the movie,being an answer to the whole movie,revealing the house of the sister's laying calmly in the lazy landscape of the sunset,revealing the house which was "put into fire" by those who believed that she was guilty.the final scene reveals the humanity of the whole movie and it gives the movie a possible continuation ,beeing placed in the zone of a flaming relationship between the main two characters of these miniatured masterpiece.

Charlotte Cory (Connie Nielsen) is on death row for the kidnapping and murder of a child - but did she do it? Aidan Quinn plays an ex-defense lawyer who makes money selling the last letters of condemned prisoners to the highest bidder (apparently, such letters fetch tens of thousands of dollars). Because Cory's case is so rare, he sees the chance to make half a million dollars on her last letter. He pretends to be a friend of her father's in order to get close to her, but he ends up becoming emotionally engaged in her situation, and falling in love with her.Return To Sender is a low-key character drama, extremely well-acted, realistic, touching and just generally well-rounded. I was absorbed by it throughout, and can't think of a single thing wrong with it. It keeps the suspense going right until the satisfying end. A great achievement by everyone involved.