Evengyny Thanks for the memories!

ShangLuda Admirable film.

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Philippa All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

SnoopyStyle Judith Merrick (Greta Scacchi) survives a car crash but her husband Dan Merrick (Tom Berenger) suffered facial trauma and amnesia. They try to go on but he can't remember their lives together from before. He finds evidence of her cheating on him with Jack Stanton which was gathered by private investigator Gus Klein (Bob Hoskins). Gus checks the accident and finds discrepancies. Dan's business partner Jeb Scott (Corbin Bernsen) is not happy with his work. Jenny (Joanne Whalley-Kilmer) is his wife. Suspicion rises that Judith had tried to kill Dan.It's an intriguing mystery although I don't like the constant micro-flashbacks. This reminds me of an old Hitchcock mystery with less style. Some of the shooting style is fairly old school and they use too much fog. The deliberate style is too noticeable. I stayed with the story with all the twists and then there is the one gigantic twist ending. It's too unlikely to work. The way to make the story work better is for Dan to have some facial disfigurements. It's just so unreal that it makes the movie feels like it's cheating.

poj-man Shattered is the kind of film that is implausible but entertaining if you don't expect cinematic art. It is certainly no more or less plausible than many Hitchcockian conceits. I mean...sure...the idea of the car being driven through the hairpin curve guardrail giving us a protagonist with complete amnesia rebuilding his life of wealth and women is implausible but...c'mon...Jimmy Stewart having Vertigo and winding up in the same situation isn't on a par? The dialogue is way better than most films. I can't speak about the male leads as I am hetero but the women are worth the ride.Bob Hoskins is entertaining but he is more of a side character who facilitates a story about deceitful characters re-emerging after a life changing event. Just who do you trust?

Michael Neumann The acclaimed director of 'Das Boot' shows off his Hollywood Hack credentials with this empty-headed, bargain-basement Hitchcock plagiarism. Tom Berenger stars as a car crash survivor, with no memory of his life beforehand (a moot point, since the script never bothers to give him one), who begins to suspect his beautiful wife may have tried to kill him. He hires pet store owner/private detective Bob Hoskins to find the truth, which when finally revealed is so far-fetched and so illogical it may strain the credulity of even the most undemanding viewer. Northern California audiences may enjoy watching Peterson play fast and loose with his San Francisco Bay area locations, moving a shipwrecked tanker from under the Marin County headlands in one scene to the opposite side of the Golden Gate in another, and rearranging city streets to suit his camera set-ups. Nitpicky details, to be sure, but if a filmmaker can't be troubled by the little things he's not likely to bother with larger issues of plot or character credibility either, and as a result there isn't a single moment here that doesn't ring false.

classicalsteve The feel of this film rings of a late 1970's early 1980's action-drama TV show, like "Hart to Hart", "Charlie's Angels", or even "Dallas", particularly because of the location shots and the music. The scenes alternate between million-dollar mansions, ritzy hotels, billion-dollar corporations, and rural locales. And the lush strings always emerge when the characters are driving through some mountainous areas. I kept thinking that Jaclyn Smith would turn up at any moment. The opening premise is quite a stretch: Tom Berenger as Dan Merrick survives after having plunged about 6000 feet off the road in his car. It's a miracle that his legs didn't end up in the glove compartment. Despite being more or less still intact, Merrick's face has been crushed into hamburger, and he can't remember who he is or what happened to him after he awakens from a coma. His wife Judith (Greta Scacchi) is only a little scratched up after the ordeal. She nurses him back to health and tries to help put the puzzle pieces back into his "shattered" memory.He finds out he's a rich commercial real estate developer with a house with its own zip code. His office at the TransAmerica building in San Francisco is bigger than the average person's apartment. And he has a beautiful secretary who must have just finished a stint as a cover model for Vogue. And his colleague is the kind of guy who uses the old "two shooter" gesture while saying "We'll do lunch." That would be a nightmare!But other pieces do not come together so easily, like why, before the accident, did he hire a private investigator (Bob Hoskins) who fronts as a pet store owner? And why did this guy's invoice end up at the development company? At one point, he thought he had bought $7000 worth of pets! (With that kind of money he could have gotten the equivalent of Magnum PI.)The film becomes a kind of noir mystery in which Merrick tries to put the pieces of his life back into perspective all the while trying to figure who he can trust. Although some of the writing and circumstances were a little hard to swallow, the movie sort of gets better as it goes along. And a great performance by Berenger holds the story together more or less. At every moment, despite its short-comings, you want to find out what happens next. And a dynamite ending that is worth the wait and the price of admission, $5 for the DVD at Fry's.