Blu-Ray Review – Return to Sender (2015)
Miranda is a practising nurse who lives in a small sleepy town, spending her days keeping her father company. Friends determined to get her back out on the dating seen she finds herself set up on a blind date. In a unfortunate turn of events Miranda is brutally raped in her, the man who assaulted her is arrested and imprisoned.
Unable to reconnect with the her world, Miranda starts writing letters to the man who assaulted her. William Finn, the recipient of these letters doesn’t want reminded of the crimes he’s committed and returns the letters to the sender. Not one to give up easily, Miranda starts visiting William and manages to win him over, much to the horror of her father. Miranda calms him claiming – I know what I’m doing. And bloody hell, she knows what she was doing!
Hot ‘aff the heels of Gone Girl Rosmund Pike stars alongside Nick Nolte in a startling rape revenge thriller from the director of Operation: Endgame. Return to Sender is a decent little thriller. Yes it is now a given that Rosamund Pike can play scary crazy, scarily easy! She’s calculating and she’s a practising surgeon! Yikes! Shiloh Fernandez the man behind William Finn assaulted the wrong woman.
Fernandez does a decent job, he has some intensity when he’s in prisoned – but that’s because he’s in the jungle, you can’t show any weakness in the jungle! When out of prison he’s a dog with a bone, just itching to bury it! Remember that’s how he ended up in prison. He goes good, but all the characters suffer in comparison to Pikes.
Nick Nolte’s character as the grief stricken father who has lost his wife and only seems to have mans best friend as his crutch. Nolte does great, he’s always managed to pull across great tragic performances.
When the film reaches its climax, it is pretty nasty! Obviously you can’t give any sympathy for the characters involved. The scenes following that will catch the audience off guard with a sudden abrupt ending.
Overall it’s a decent little film, it’s polished, it’s freaky and it’s a one watch wonder.
Blu-Ray Special Features
The UK Release from Arrow includes one single special feature a Behind the Scenes feature that lasts for around ten minutes. It’s your standard segment, cast members express their thoughts on working with the likes of Rosemund Pike and their director. Pike tells us how she came across the script and how she was left disturbed, but engrossed in the characters and the paths they go down.
It’s a shame that there’s only this one segment, a directors commentary track would have been a nice touch or maybe some deleted scenes to emphases the closing scenes of the film, but alas we can only take what we are given and I give the Arrow Films release of Return to Sender a strong…