Pretty Good

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

I had heard about this film for some time, mainly because of the leading actor and bits and pieces I had heard about the concept, I hoped it would be something I would enjoy, written by J.J. Abrams (Forever Young, Alias, Lost, Star Wars: The Force Awakens), directed by Mike Nichols (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Graduate, Closer, Charlie Wilson's War). Basically Henry Turner (Harrison Ford) is an ambitious and highly successful Manhattan lawyer, but he is obsessed with work and has a callous, narcissistic, and sometimes unethical nature. Henry being despicable and ruthless in the workplace, spending the majority of his time there leaves him little time to be with his prim socialite wife Sarah (Annette Bening) and troubled pre-teenage daughter Rachel (Mikki Allen). One night, Henry goes into a convenience store for cigarettes, there he interrupts a robbery, the Gunman (John Leguizamo) shoots Henry in the chest and head before fleeing. The bullet to the head hit Henry's right frontal lobe, and the bullet to the chest hit Henry's left subclavian vein, this means he experienced internal bleeding and a cardiac arrest, but more imminently he has suffered brain damage, losing the ability to move or speak, and suffers retrograde amnesia. With the help of a physical therapist Bradley (Bill Nunn), Henry slowly regains his movement and speech, returning home he is almost childlike, with Rachel teaching him to read, being impressed by his surroundings, and forming new friendships with his family and colleagues. Henry realises he does not like the person he was before the shooting, and she and her daughter have become much closer, she is not happy to be going to an out-of-town elite school for girls, as had been planned for her, Henry and Sarah also become much closer, returning to how passionate they felt when they first met, she suggests they should relocate to a smaller, less expensive residence. Henry is allowed to return to work at his firm, but his old assignments and large office are taken away, he is essentially only assigned busy work, he begins to realise he does not want to be a lawyer anymore, this is confirmed when he hears "friends" making derogatory comments about him at a dinner. Henry finds a letter to Sarah from a former colleague disclosing an affair, he is also approached by fellow attorney Linda (Rebecca Miller) who reveals that they also had an affair and had told her he would leave Sarah for her, this makes Henry have second thoughts about himself and his relationships. Henry gives documents from his last case that were suppressed by the firm to the plaintiff who was right all along, he apologises to them, in the end Henry resigns from the firm, says goodbye to Linda, returns to and reconciles with Sarah, realising everything with their lives, before the shooting, was wrong, and finally they withdraw Rachel from the school, Henry and her family all walk away happy. Also starring Donald Moffat as Charlie Cameron, James Rebhorn as Dr. Sultan, Aida Linares as Rosella, Elizabeth Wilson as Henry's secretary Jessica, Robin Bartlett as Phyllis, Bruce Altman as Henry's partner Bruce and John MacKay as George. Ford is often in roles showing not much emotion, so it is perhaps an odd choice for him to be a mean lawyer turning nice, Bening gets some good moments as his wife, it is a very simple story, it may have its flaws in terms of star power, some sympathy for the characters and some predictable bits, but can just get washed up in the glossiness of it, it is a nice enough story, a reasonable drama. Worth watching!

This film is a good example of Harrison Ford's depth and versatility as an actor. It is easy to forget that he can do excellent dramatic roles as well, and serve not only as action hero. Ford plays the cynical and scheming lawyer Henry. Unsympathetic is only the first name. Henry shows little emotion, beyond enjoying his great career as a lawyer, we get the impression is all that matters. But it happens a serious incident. And life is turned upside down for him. The incident forcing Henry to look at life anew, and determine which values that really matter to him. Harrison Ford portrays this excellent and he conveys the change that Henry undergoes in a good, convincing way. A touching, well-acted, entertaining film.

This is possibly the worst movie about traumatic brain injury (TBI) ever made. As a former speech therapist who worked with children and adults recovering from TBI I was appalled at the lack of apparent research in preparation for the film. Nichols and Ford were so far off the mark it was embarrassingly silly. Example: For person recovering language it's a bad idea to swamp them with so much language that all words become a meaningless string of sounds. It's the same as dropping a non-swimmer in the ocean knowing all that water is going to teach him to swim. The physical therapist was probably the worst and any self respecting speech therapist would've told him to be quiet. The plot is simple predictable and unmoving.why this director would take these actors and toss them into a dramatic ocean and expect them to swim without direction is as silly as their depiction of recovering from TBI.

For all the virile toughness Harrison Ford showcased during his career, one director, Mike Nichols, believed in giving him a shot as a totally different kind of character, a man struck by amnesia, reborn as a sweet and caring husband and father, so delightfully contrasting with the arrogant yuppie bastard, conveniently a lawyer, he used to be. That could have been an Oscar-worthy performance for Harrison Ford, or a poignant humble drama about a family stricken by a tragic accident, but the outcome is so cheap, so predictable that it's not surprising the film has sunk into oblivion just as quickly and surely as Henry Turner's memory vanished.And the first blame is on the screenplay, there's nothing written by J.J. Abrams, a fitting name for a script that flirted so much with parody, that doesn't seem forced as a necessary set-up for an emotionally rewarding pay-off. The film opens with a man who's obviously a suave bastard, so confident over his own ego that he dominates anyone around him, from his colleagues to his secretary, from his wife Sarah (Annette Bening) to his daughter Rachel (Mikki Allen), lectured like an incompetent associate just because she dropped lemonade on Henry's beloved piano. You know when someone behaves so condescendingly and let's say patronizing toward a child that a scene where he's the Father-of-the-Year will come up. And naturally, in another badly made scene where you can tell the girl is waiting to 'accidentally' spill her glass of orange juice, so he can do the same thing to reassure her, that now he's changed.The problem is that that very scene, which supposedly show Henry's transformation, highlight the film's biggest problem which is Ford's portrayal of a simple-minded man. The man is shot with a bullet to his head when buying cigarettes in his usual grocery store (why the robber aimed at the head we'll never know) and after a comatose episode, he remembers nothing, not even how to speak, let alone to read … but don't worry, the recovery will be so spectacular for plot's sake that we won't have time to worry much. The miraculous cure is driven by Bill Nunn as Bradley, a charismatic and jovial care taker who'll make Henry finally speak by putting too much tobacco on his eggs. At that time, we never know whether Henry is an adult who just lost memory or a child in an adult's body. Anyone would believe a man dropping juice on the table as a joke, has something of a child, but had the plot stick to that characteristic, there would be no plot.Then we get to the last case he worked on, where he obviously hid precious information allowing his client, a wealthy and respectable Hospital institution to win the case, naturally, as a new man, Henry will side with the 'David' against the greedy and high-powered 'Goliath'. But how can a man so childish be able to understand the malevolent schemes he elaborated, did he get the innocence of a young child and hence understood it was just 'bad'? How about his colleagues, couldn't they see the man changed for the worst according to their own standards? "Regarding Henry" looks like an assemblage of micro-plots and subplots whose conclusions only depends on Henry's level of intelligence, which vary according to the purpose it serves. And if Ford genuinely keeps the right one-note performance as if he understood that Henry's behavior couldn't change, the writing is never on the same wavelength.It's a real shame, because the performances are all decent, Annette Bening is good as the devoted wife who discovers the new face of her husband, Mikki Allen, has a normal look that conveys an inner sadness, in her portrayal of a lost preteen. Bill Nunn steals the show, I especially liked their last conversation about the meaning of their life, and the idea of second chance (the film needed more moments like that). I also liked some plot points regarding sex and money, real-life marital issues, but Nichols was in a hurry to get to Henry's redemption and to incarnate it through a real good deed, when he give the incriminating evidence to the couple he'd just ruined their life, the rest elements of the story hardly mattered at that moment, and it was time to end the story. Nichols made so many solid and poignant stories and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" reduces "Regarding Henry" to the level of a TV Thursday afternoon drama.There might be another problem "Regarding Henry" which simply is due to the very premise of the film: since Henry changed as soon as he recovered from that injury, he was a good man from a beginning, and de facto, he couldn't be nothing else, the character didn't evolve, he didn't owe his goodness to a change of mind, but to a strike of fate. Noentheless, there were many opportunities to make the story more endearing: his previous mistress, the adultery, the relationship with his daughter, something that make us wonder what could happen next. There's nothing in the film any film lover wouldn't see coming from a mile, should that ruin the enjoyment, not so? But there has been so much great films released since that it's incomprehensible how the collision of such talents could give such a mediocre result. Talk about an unfortunate accident, mostly to be blamed on the writer and the director who couldn't see through it, and the actors who could at least try to spice up a little bit. Give Ford a great screenplay, and he'll make you a real Oscar-worthy performance (this comes from someone who just saw "Witness" again) "Regarding Henry" is victim of that common syndrome from wannabe great dramas, you don't see what they are, but what they try to be. I'm not sure "Regarding Henry" intended to be so flat, but it did.