After their home is burgled, Michael (Kurt Russell) and Karen Carr (Madeline Stowe) call in the police and arrange for a new security system to be installed.
What they do not is that the real danger is not from burglars but the friendly cop who keeps showing up at odd times to see how Karen is doing.
When Michael realises there is something off Officer Pete Davis (Ray Liotta), he cannot convince anyone that a cop wants to destroy his life.
And the people who do believe him either disappear or turn up dead…
On the surface, Unlawful Entry fits the ‘nightmare archetype destroys the white picket fence fantasy’ that a movie like The Hand That Rocks The Cradle fits into.
While the premise is familiar, the execution tells a different story.
In the opening series of helicopter shots, we are taken from a crime scene in the middle of the city, and from there we are taken to the suburbs, where our protagonists live. This introduction highlights both the disparity between our protagonists and the city they live in, and the way in which they have separated themselves from it. The only thing that would have made this opening sequence more obvious would be if the words ‘white flight’ were flashing on-screen.
I was going to make some broad point about the police being an institution to protect the status quo, but while I was writing this review, in the UK the police turned out in force to evict five protestors who had occupied a Russian oligarch’s house and claimed it for rehousing Ukrainian refugees. What was interesting was seeing the commentary discussing how quickly police had shown up to this property, versus how lackadaisical they were when ordinary people called for help.
There are too many stories about how rampant racism and misogyny are in the police. There are decades of reports and books where you can catalogue the corruption of this institution.
What makes Unlawful Entry interesting is that its nightmare scenario boils down to what would happen if the police turned on the well-off white people they are usually eager to protect.
While the plot is a conventional Hollywood thriller, Unlawful Entry’s strength comes from how helpless the Carrs are to get rid of their enemy. Not only does Travis have a gun, he has the weight of the badge, and the mythology that has built up around the idea of being a cop.
He is able to screw with this couple for so long because no one is willing to believe that a cop can be bad.
Beyond the thriller plot mechanics, there is something dead-eyed and knowing about the movie - a recognition of the power of the police, and the ways in which it is abused.
Travis is evil, but it feels like he has been facilitated by his role.
Early on, Travis states that the view he has taken on as a cop is that it is ‘cops vs everyone else’. While Travis is paranoid and has a hair-trigger temper, his paranoia is not singular.
Later on, when Carr makes a complaint against Travis, the officer snidely makes an inference to the Rodney King video, saying that these days “everyone has a videotape”. That incident took place a year earlier and it does feel like an intentional reference.
The film is also clear in emphasising how the police as an institution is viewed between different ethnic groups: When Carr is arrested and asks for his lawyer, the filmmakers play the action in a wide shot, with Kurt Russell on a bench. Behind him, but in focus, are two black extras who are also being processed. While he asks the officer for his phone call, the two extras laugh and shake their heads. It is a small but significant detail.
Liotta’s performance as Travis is the piercing, uncomfortable embodiment of this deceptively simple picture.
When he passed away last year, Martin Scorsese wrote a tribute to him in the Guardian, and described how Liotta embodied the contradictory qualities he needed for Henry Hill in Goodfellas:
“He needed to be dangerous. He needed to be disarming. He needed to be vulnerable. Within the context of the world we were dealing with, he had to be something close to an innocent, the guy who was always there, witnessing everything, along for the ride.”
Liotta employs these same qualities as Travis - he can go from undercutting Michael’s masculinity at every turn, to providing a soft, reassuring presence around Karen.
In the generic version of this movie, Travis would be a generic one-note villain. But Liotta’s vulnerability is key - there is a sense of silent yearning to his performance, particularly when he is just watching the happy couple. Liotta’s Travis is deeply insecure about being alone, and seems to see himself as a higher form of man compared with Karen’s husband. As the film progresses, Travis’s frustration that he cannot win over Karen gradually boils over, and Liotta communicates that tension purely through his eyes and clenched jaw.
Kurt Russell and Madeline Stowe are great as the Carrs. Russell leans into Michael’s insecurities, as he is triggered by Travis’s various antics. It is an unromantic, unglamorous role, and Russell does it justice.
Stowe does not have as much to work with, but she manages to make the fissure between her character and Michael believable.
While the acting is good, and it is suspenseful, what stands out about Unlawful Entry is how it engages with the subtext of the genre of thrillers it is riffing on.
So many of these early nineties thrillers premise themselves on disrupting the status quo of the middle class, white picket fence version of the American Dream. Whereas other movies end with some kind of restoration, where the disrupting force is destroyed and the original order of the family/house is restored, Unlawful Entry destroys that sense of order and leaves it that way.
While the Carrs are able to rid themselves of Travis, they are completely destroyed. The movie leaves them traumatised in their house, while sirens play in the background.
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