Unlawful Entry (1992)
(In French, On Cable TV, June 2020) Ray Liotta has made a career out of playing the crazy heavy, and there’s a fair case to be made that Unlawful Entry, in its caricatural ham-fisted exploitation, may feature the most Lay Liottaesque of all of Ray Liotta’s roles. He here plays opposite a young and charming couple (a young Kurt Russell and a lovely Madeline Stowe), coming into their lives as a policeman responding to a robbery call. But as seasoned Liotta fans can predict, he turns out to be dangerously obsessed with his new female friend, and violent enough to take out most obstacles in his path—including the husband. Murders and frame-ups follow, leading all the way to the usual violence-filled climax. It’s really not meant to be subtle. Watching it right as the United States is being consumed with anti-police-brutality demonstrations is a useful demonstration that rogue cops are clearly a cultural fixture. Otherwise, Unlawful Entry does have a pleasant early-1990s sheen of an L.A.-based thriller. Its decidedly Hollywoodish depiction of its antagonist as an over-the-top villain can go both ways—it’s either juvenile, or exactly the kind of over-the-top nonsense that this exploitation thriller needs.