''Unlawful Entry'' is a 1992 American

psychological thriller Psychological thriller is a genre combining the thriller and psychological fiction genres. It is commonly used to describe literature or films that deal with psychological narratives in a thriller or thrilling setting. In terms of context and co ...

film directed by

Jonathan Kaplan Jonathan Kaplan (born November 25, 1947) is an American film producer and director. His film ''The Accused'' (1988) earned actress Jodie Foster an Oscar for Best Actress and was nominated for the Golden Bear at the 39th Berlin International ...

, and starring

Kurt Russell Kurt Vogel Russell (born March 17, 1951) is an American actor. He began acting on television at the age of 12 in the Westerns on television, western series ''The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters (TV series), The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters'' (19 ...

Madeleine Stowe Madeleine Marie Stowe Mora (born August 18, 1958) is an American actress. She appeared mostly on television before her role in the 1987 crime-comedy film ''Stakeout''. She went on to star in the films ''Revenge'' (1990), ''Unlawful Entry'' (199 ...

and

Ray Liotta Raymond Allen Liotta (; December 18, 1954 – May 26, 2022) was an American actor. He was best known for his roles as Shoeless Joe Jackson in ''Field of Dreams'' (1989) and Henry Hill in Martin Scorsese's ''Goodfellas'' (1990). He was a Primeti ...

. The film involves a couple who befriend a lonely policeman, only for him to develop an unrequited fixation on the wife, leading to chilling consequences. The movie received generally positive reviews especially for Ray Liotta's performance who was nominated for an

MTV Movie Award for Best Villain This is a following list of the MTV Movie Award winners and nominees for Best Villain. In 2012, the award was renamed Best On-Screen Dirt Bag, though the Best Villain moniker was reinstated the following year. Two of the winners (Denzel Washington a ...

in 1993 for his portrayal of the psychopathic cop. The film was remade in

Bollywood Hindi cinema, popularly known as Bollywood and formerly as Bombay cinema, refers to the film industry based in Mumbai, engaged in production of motion pictures in Hindi language. The popular term Bollywood, is a portmanteau of "Bombay" (fo ...

as '' Fareb'' in 1996.

Plot

Michael and Karen Carr (

and

) are a couple living in an upscale part of

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

. One night, an intruder enters their home through their skylight, upsetting their tranquility. The intruder briefly takes Karen as a hostage with a knife, before dumping her in the swimming pool and escaping. The Carrs call the police, one of whom, Pete Davis (

), is quickly intrigued by their politeness, and takes extra interest in the couple's case, cutting through department red tape and quickly installs a security system in the Carrs' house. In appreciation for Pete's services, Michael and Karen form a friendship with him and invite him to dinner. When Michael expresses an interest in getting revenge on the intruder, Pete invites him on a

ride-along A ride-along is an arrangement for a civilian to spend a shift in the passenger seat of an emergency vehicle, observing the work day of a police officer, firefighter, or paramedic. Ride-alongs are offered by many police departments around the wo ...

with his partner, Roy Cole (

Roger E. Mosley Roger Earl Mosley (; December 18, 1938 – August 7, 2022) was an American actor, director, and writer best known for his role as the helicopter pilot Theodore "T.C." Calvin in the CBS television series '' Magnum, P.I.'', which originally aired ...

). After dropping Cole off, Pete reveals he has arrested the man who broke into the Carrs' house and offers Michael a chance to take some revenge using Pete's nightstick in retaliation for attacking Karen. Michael declines, insisting that he wasn't serious about personally taking revenge, but Pete responds by becoming insistent and demanding. After the burglar attempts to run away, Pete brutally beats him before Michael demands him to stop. Deeply suspicious of Pete's mental stability and overprotective behavior, Michael demands Karen to stay away from him, but Karen refuses to believe him as she believes Micheal is overreacting. When Pete arrives at Michael's club, Michael harshly criticizes Pete for his behavior and rejects their friendship coldly, demanding that he stay away from him and Karen. After unsuccessfully attempting to cope by having sex with a random woman whom he sees as "worthless", Pete, having been already infatuated with Karen, invites her for coffee to get to know her better and begins to intrude in her marriage with Michael, believing that Michael is not standing up enough for Karen. Pete, having become jealous, angered, and loathing with hatred over Michael's rejection, begins to harass him by ruining his finances, and breaks into the house after setting the alarm off under the pretense on checking on the couple while having sex. When Michael files a complaint against Pete's unwanted attentions, Pete uses his police connections to destroy Michael's business reputation while encountering bemused apathy from Pete's superiors in the LAPD. Under advice from his lawyer, Michael tries to bribe Pete with $5000 and apologizes for his rejection, but Pete rejects Michael's offer and reveals his obsession with Karen and warns him that he could kill him, causing Michael to scold and warn Karen about Pete's obsession with her, further demanding that she stay away from him. Michael turns to Cole, who orders his partner to cease his obsessing, see a shrink or face suspension. Pete then remorselessly murders Cole, blaming it on a known criminal. Pete then frames Michael on drug charges by planting a supply of

cocaine Cocaine (from , from , ultimately from Quechuan languages, Quechua: ''kúka'') is a central nervous system (CNS) stimulant mainly recreational drug use, used recreationally for its euphoria, euphoric effects. It is primarily obtained from t ...

in the Carrs' house, enabling him to move in on Karen. Jeopardizing his attorney's finances, Michael resolves to get out on bail and take matters into his own hands. Back at the Carr house, Karen wakes up to find Pete cooking in place of her friend and colleague, Penny. After Pete declares his love for Karen, Karen discovers Penny's corpse, realizing that Pete brutally murdered her friend. Karen rejects Pete by holding him at gunpoint after pretending to accept him and making love with him to take away his gun. After refusing to leave, Karen attempts to shoot him, only to find out the gun wasn't loaded, as Pete had anticipated. Pete dismisses Karen as worthless and attempts to rape her, but is unsuccessful after finding his police car vandalized, realizing that Michael has returned home. Michael and Karen try to escape, but Pete attacks Michael while Karen hides in the bathroom. Pete and Michael fight, during which Pete accidentally causes the police to start heading over to the house after attempting to answer a phone call while acting as Michael and giving the wrong code, which Michael had changed. Pete holds Michael at gunpoint outside of the bathroom where Karen is, and Pete demands that Karen open the door and escape with him or he'll kill Michael, while Michael begs Karen not to, saying Pete will kill him anyway. Karen ultimately bursts out of the room and uses an ornament to strike Pete in the face, allowing Michael to gain the upper hand, punching Pete and knocking him down the stairs. As Karen and Michael wait for the police to arrive, Pete regains consciousness as Michael holds him at gunpoint. Pete, believing Michael will not shoot him, tauntingly asks Michael if he'll arrest him as a citizen, just like Michael did when Pete threatened to kill him. To Pete's shock, Michael chooses the opposite and shoots him until the gun is empty, ultimately killing Pete. A relieved Michael and Karen then go outside and watch as the police arrive at the scene.

Cast

Production

Filming

Principal photography began on October 25, 1991. Filming took place in and around

Los Angeles, California Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

. The house that was used for the Carr residence in the film is located at 546 Wilcox Ave. The school sequence was filmed at Doris Place Elementary School. The sequence where Michael is in jail was filmed at

Lincoln Heights Jail Lincoln Heights Jail is a former jail building complex in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, located adjacent to the Los Angeles River and situated about southwest of the Lincoln/Cypress station. The original building ...

. Production wrapped on February 5, 1992.

Soundtrack

The original soundtrack was composed by James Horner. It was released on Intrada records, an extended version of the soundtrack was released by La-La Land Records in 2017. The movie featured several songs that were not included on the soundtrack. "Pa La Ocha Tambo" and "Just a Little Dream" by

Eddie Palmieri Eddie Palmieri (born December 15, 1936) is an American Grammy Award-winning pianist, bandleader, musician, and composer of Puerto Rican ancestry. He is the founder of the bands La Perfecta, La Perfecta II, and Harlem River Drive. Early life Pal ...

, "National Crime Awareness Week (Alfred Hitchcock Presents Mix)" by Sparks, Everybody's Free to Feel Good" by

Rozalla Rozalla Miller (born 18 March 1964), better known as simply Rozalla, is a Zimbabwean electronic music performer who was born in what was then Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). At the age of 18, she moved with her parents to her father's country o ...

, and "Don't Go to Strangers" by

J. J. Cale John Weldon "J. J." Cale (December 5, 1938 – July 26, 2013) was an American guitarist, singer, songwriter and sound engineer. Though he avoided the limelight, his influence as a musical artist has been acknowledged by figures such as Mark Knop ...

. ;US CD (Intrada Records) track listing All tracks written and composed by James Horner. # "Main Title" - 3:14 # "Intruder" - 2:08 # "Being Watched" - 5:42 # "Leon's Death" - 3:01 # "Drug Bust" - 3:06 # "Bail Denied" - 2:26 # "Pete's Passion" - 11:15 # "End Credits" - 4:22

Reception

Box office

The film was released in the U.S. on June 26, 1992, opening at #2 in 1,511 theaters, an average of $6,662 per theater. Grossing $10,067,609 in the opening weekend, it went on to gross $57,138,719 in the domestic market. It was a box-office success, and brought back its $23 million budget.

Critical response

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, 74% of reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.2/10. The critical consensus reads, "''Unlawful Entry'' may not depict a particularly novel or believable situation, but tense direction and a roundly committed cast make it easy to get caught up in the moment." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 61 out of 100, based on 25 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by

CinemaScore CinemaScore is a market research firm based in Las Vegas. It surveys film audiences to rate their viewing experiences with letter grades, reports the results, and forecasts box office receipts based on the data. Background Ed Mintz founded Ci ...

gave it an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.

Roger Ebert Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...

praised director Jonathan Kaplan for giving the film's story a sense of realism with its locations, characters with "unrestrained realism" from the actors and having "undertones of a serious social drama" when confronting fears about a delusional police authority. ''

Variety Variety may refer to: Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats * Variety (radio) * Variety show, in theater and television Films * ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont * ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...

''s

Todd McCarthy Todd McCarthy (born February 16, 1950) is an American film critic and author. He wrote for ''Variety'' for 31 years as its chief film critic until 2010. In October of that year, he joined ''The Hollywood Reporter'', where he subsequently served ...

wrote that despite being another film that follows in the mould of '' Fatal Attraction'', he called it "a very effective victimization thriller", praising both Liotta and Russell's performances and Kaplan's direction of the script into "areas of social and class-structure observations" when dealing with unhinged police figures in an urban setting. In her review for ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'',

Janet Maslin Janet R. Maslin (born August 12, 1949) is an American journalist, best known as a film and literary critic for ''The New York Times''. She served as a ''Times'' film critic from 1977 to 1999 and as a book critic from 2000 to 2015. In 2000 Maslin ...

was critical of the three main leads lacking depth and substance in the motivations of their characters but gave credit to Liotta for giving "complexity" to his role, a solid supporting cast and the "level-headed" direction Kaplan takes with the plot, even as it stretches credibility.

References

External links

* * * * {{Jonathan Kaplan 1992 films 1992 crime thriller films 1990s American films 1990s English-language films 1990s mystery thriller films 1990s psychological thriller films American crime thriller films American mystery thriller films American police detective films American psychological thriller films Fictional portrayals of the Los Angeles Police Department Films about prostitution in the United States Films about stalking Films scored by James Horner Films directed by Jonathan Kaplan Films shot in Los Angeles Home invasions in film Largo Entertainment films