Review: Remember Me

In this romantic drama of trauma set in lower Manhattan and Queens, the daughter of a cop and the son of a lawyer are both taking a Global Politics class at NYU where terrorist ethics are under discussion. They find love, work through a few personal non-global issues, break up for a bit, get back together, then BAM! it’s all gone. “Remember Me” starts with three loud bangs one night in 1991 when a mugger shoots a nurse on a Brooklyn subway platform. Ten years later, her daughter Ally (Emilie de Ravin), who witnessed the slaying, lives at home with her detective dad Neil Craig (Chris Cooper).”I don’t date sociology majors,” she lies to Tyler (Robert Pattinson, two “Twilight”s, two “Harry Potter”s and “Little Ashes,” where he played Salvador Dali). She asks him what he is. “Undecided,” answers Tyler. “About what?” asks Ally. “Everything,” he answers. This sounds a little like “The Wild One” when Mildred asks Johnny what he’s rebelling against and he asks, whaddya got? Tyler is an unshaven cliché with a chip on his slouched shoulder, a cig in his sullen mouth, and a tattoo on his chest remembering his older brother who hung himself. Tyler lives with an insufferable sidekick Aidan (Tate Ellington) and shelves used books at the Strand Bookstore. His epicenter of hurt is his hardcharging attorney father Charles (Pierce Brosnan). Tyler hates him for neglecting his older brother, once a guitarist, and his little sister in the sixth grade who paints. Tyler shares his own creative vulnerability by reading the film’s narration from a leatherbound journal. He quotes Gandhi and tracks what Mozart and Chuck Berry achieved at age 22. Allen Coulter (“Hollywoodland”) directs an earnest script by Will Fetters, and makes his actors shout at each other much too often in this tony weepie about wounded New Yorkers. With Ruby Jerins, Lena Olin, Kate Burton, Gregory Jbara. 113m. (Bill Stamets)