If Harrison Ford and Annette Bening had a kid, it wouldn't be this ugly.

Author's Rating:

Pros: Highly moral. Good acting. A simple, truthful story simply told.

Cons: It's a slow drama.

The Bottom Line: 
This is a feel good movie that doesn't accomplish that effect by taking cheap shots.

Author's Review
It may be harsh on young Mikki Allen to say so, but she wasn’t a cute kid. Well, she was cute, in a way, but certainly not beautiful. Which doesn’t help the credibility of Harrison Ford and Annette Bening settling down and producing offspring. But to her credit, Allen did fairly well in this, her only role. So did her senior costars.


Premise

Henry Turner is a hard-nosed NYC lawyer who defends insurance companies from the ‘frivolous’ lawsuits of their neglected customers. He’s admired by friends, feared by enemies, and lives in a palatial apartment. The biggest challenge in his life is the fact that the wrong dining table was delivered to his apartment. Oh, and he has a wife and daughter.

One night Henry goes down to the corner store to get some cigarettes. He walks in on a robbery and gets shot in the head. Lucky for him, he survives. But while the bullet to the brain doesn’t do him much harm, apparently he’s also been shot in the chest, and the resulting asphyxia gives him brain damage.

He wakes up in a convalescent center unable to speak or move. Or remember. He embarks on a long road to both recovery and self-discovery while his wife, Sarah, and daughter, Rachel, struggle to adjust to their new life with this stranger, their kinder, gentler father and husband.


Acting

Harrison Ford is Henry, and performs admirably in a challenging role. It’s difficult for him to successfully strip himself of his swashbuckling aura. But with Blade Runner, Witness, The Mosquito Coast, Regarding Henry, and now K-19 The Widowmaker under his belt, he really should be getting more credit as an actor than he does. Here he is delicate, even reserved or dull. He is quiet. His Henry is devoid of the exaggerated ticks and slurs so commonly used in portraying people with disabilities. When unable to speak, Ford nonetheless communicates his emotions well. And the innocence and sweetness of his post-trauma persona are believable, contrasting unrecognizably with the callous lawyer he was. The empathy we feel for Henry and his family as they search out their new life is largely due to Ford’s acting.

Annette Bening, not my favorite actress by any stretch, turns in a decent but lackluster performance as Sarah. For much of the movie, her role is one-dimensional as Sarah struggles to stay afloat, going back to work and dutifully nursing Henry. Bening isn’t to blame necessarily, since the story withholds important facets of her character until Henry discovers them for himself, i.e. before the shooting their marriage was loveless and she was having an affair. But as the tale progresses and the truth comes out, Bening is given freer reign and successfully communicates Sarah’s wonder at Henry’s changed personality, and her reinvigorated love for him.

Mikki Allen’s only role in a major film was Rachel, Henry and Sarah’s daughter. I actually thought she did well. She’s a sober, even morose child. The product of an unhappy marriage. She takes on the role of responsible older sibling to Henry’s naive reborn child. And Henry’s innocence and gaiety eventually restore to her the childishness she never had. Not the greatest performance by a child actor, but there was no transparent cuteness, sappiness or silliness.

Bill Nunn is Bradley, the unorthodox and sometimes crass therapist that helps Henry get back on his feet. There’s some potentially touching scenes as Henry is forced to leave the hospital and Bradley (the only family he now knows) in order to go home with his real family who are strangers to him. Thankfully, the sentimentality of these episodes is not pushed to its limits. Nunn’s performance is strong and he deserves more good roles. Unfortunately, as with all but a handful of black actors, good acting mostly lands him minor roles, while clownish character actors, in what sometimes seems a thinly veiled blackface, are allowed to churn out tripe yearly.


Behind the Camera

The cinematography, editing, and direction are all subdued. The people who made this movie were willing to sacrifice opportunities for grandstanding for the sake of keeping the focus on the story and characters. Even the soundtrack is restrained. The product is very plain in this way. Unglamorous. But the approach is eminently true to the tale.


Thoughts

Henry’s newfound innocence is shattered when he discovers Sarah’s past infidelities. More importantly, the discovery sets him on the path to rediscover himself, the man he was. As he visits the folk he cheated of their settlements, and learns of his own past indiscretions, he realizes he was not a good man. And this comes harder than knowledge of Sarah’s betrayal.

Henry is in a unique position. An enviable position. He is taken from his life, wiped clean of his biases and preferences, and reintroduced to it tabula rasa. He has the opportunity to make a clear choice, to resume his life or to start over. Such a chance I’m sure we all have contemplated.

Ultimately, the message of Regarding Henry is redemptive. Henry abandons a life of avarice and unfeeling self-centeredness. His transformation triggers a similar renewal in Sarah, who falls in love like she hasn’t been for years. And in Rachel, who at last becomes a child. And not only do these people come to terms with their pasts, turn away from their unhappiness and choose a different life, but they also come to terms with each other. Adultery is not winked at here, but Henry and Sarah are able to forgive each other, and deserve that forgiveness.

This is not a simple story. Not even Rachel’s stodgy schoolmistress is monochrome. Her sympathy is clear when Rachel’s parents come to retrieve their daughter. I would not say Regarding Henry is a great film. Critics and the academy were perhaps justified in overlooking it. And I wouldn’t say it is an important film. But the story it tells is important. It’s a story about life, and the human capability to change and choose a new course when the present heading leads to unhappiness. It’s the story we all live, the choice we can all choose, if we can only take a step back and look at ourselves without pretense.


- Panguitch