The New York Times
November 11, 2000
By Julie Salamon

For various financing and distribution reasons, many feature films don't find their way into theaters but end up making their debuts on cable television. Sometimes this seems a pity, and sometimes the small screen seems exactly the right size.

Paul Schrader's new film, "Forever Mine," was meant for theaters but has ended up making its premiere on Starz, a cable channel. While this may be disappointing to the filmmaker, appearing in the arena of lowered expectations may actually benefit his movie, which feels like something you've seen before.

Still, it's always interesting to see what Mr. Schrader is up to. He has been probing the dark side for years, sometimes with startling, powerful results, most famously with his screenplay for "Taxi Driver" and more recently with "Affliction," which he wrote and directed.

As screenwriter and director, Mr. Schrader has carefully composed "Forever Mine."

He keeps the camera gliding smoothly and slowly, piling on portent with every frame. The technique is there, but the movie feels like an academic exercise, a lesson in film noir -- complete with a neurotic blond heroine (Gretchen Mol) and a flawed but honorable hero (Joseph Fiennes).

They meet on the grounds of a luscious pink beach hotel where she's a guest and he's a cabana boy. But he has greater aspirations, which include extricating this sexy woman from her marriage.

Mr. Schrader hasn't managed to bring new life to an old form, as Curtis Hanson did in 1997 with "L.A. Confidential." The characters in "Forever Mine" seem stamped out of a mold, except for poor Mr. Fiennes, whose imitation of a Latino is distinctive and likely to stay that way. Ray Liotta, familiarly playing a bad man and even worse husband, explodes on cue. Everyone on screen is relentlessly gloomy, as if parched for a drop of wit, which isn't forthcoming.