''Shattered'' is a 1991 American

psychological thriller Psychological thriller is a Film genre, genre combining the thriller (genre), 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 ...

film written and directed by

Wolfgang Petersen Wolfgang Petersen (14 March 1941 – 12 August 2022) was a German film and television director, screenwriter, and producer. His international breakthrough was the 1981 war film (1981), which earned him Academy Award nominations for Best Directo ...

, based on the novel by Richard Neely. The film stars

Tom Berenger Tom Berenger (born Thomas Michael Moore; May 31, 1949) is an American actor. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of the Staff Sergeant Bob Barnes in ''Platoon'' (1986). He is also known for playing ...

Greta Scacchi Greta Scacchi ( , ; born 18 February 1960) is an actress. Born in Italy to a British-Italian couple, she was raised in Britain and finally settled in Australia, becoming a naturalized citizen. Scacchi had her first leading role in the romanti ...

Bob Hoskins Robert William Hoskins (26 October 1942 – 29 April 2014) was an English actor and film director. Known for his intense but sensitive portrayals of "tough guy" characters, he began his career on stage before making his screen breakthrough pl ...

Joanne Whalley Joanne Whalley (born 25 August 1961) is an English film and television actress. She was credited as Joanne Whalley-Kilmer from 1988 to 1996 during her marriage to Val Kilmer. Whalley came to fame through television with appearances in drama se ...

and

Corbin Bernsen Corbin Dean Bernsen (born September 7, 1954) is an American actor and film director. He appeared as divorce attorney Arnold Becker on the NBC drama series ''L.A. Law'',

Plot

While driving at night along the

northern California Northern California (commonly shortened to NorCal) is a geocultural region that comprises the northern portion of the U.S. state of California, spanning the northernmost 48 of the state's List of counties in California, 58 counties. Northern Ca ...

coast, architect Dan Merrick and his wife Judith are involved in a car wreck. Dan suffers major injuries and brain trauma, resulting in

psychogenic amnesia Dissociative amnesia or psychogenic amnesia is a dissociative disorder "characterized by retrospectively reported memory gaps. These gaps involve an inability to recall personal information, usually of a traumatic or stressful nature." The conc ...

. After extensive plastic surgery, Dan returns home in Judith's care. Dan relies on those close to him to help him restore his past, including his business partner Jeb Scott and Jeb's wife, Jenny. Dan has frequent flashbacks he believes to be events that led up to the car crash. Dan finds discrepancies in the stories about his former self. He stumbles upon photographs of Judith sleeping with another man. Dan finds an expensive bill to a pet store and follows up with its proprietor, Gus Klein. Gus says the payment was for services provided as a

private investigator A private investigator (often abbreviated to PI; also known as a private detective, an inquiry agent or informally a wikt:private eye, private eye) is a person who can be hired by individuals or groups to undertake investigatory law services. ...

to follow Judith, and it revealed she was cheating with Jack Stanton. Judith arranges a meeting with Stanton and Dan follows her. Judith stops at an old

shipwreck A shipwreck is the wreckage of a ship that is located either beached on land or sunken to the bottom of a body of water. It results from the event of ''shipwrecking'', which may be intentional or unintentional. There were approximately thre ...

slated for removal by Dan's company. Assuming the wreck is a key in remembering his past, Dan has its removal postponed. Jenny accuses Judith of planning the accident to eliminate Dan. As he works with Gus to keep tabs on his wife with a

wiretap Wiretapping, also known as wire tapping or telephone tapping, is the monitoring of telephone and Internet-based conversations by a third party, often by covert means. The wire tap received its name because, historically, the monitoring connecti ...

, Dan tails her to a hotel where she and Stanton are to meet, but Stanton leaves and a chase ensues through a wooded area. After gunshots are fired from Stanton's car, Dan and Gus crash while Stanton escapes. That night at home, Dan arms himself and lies in wait. At gunpoint, an intruder is revealed as Judith disguised as Stanton. She explains that Stanton is actually dead, killed by Dan on the night of the accident. Judith had intended to stop the affair with Stanton. Judith says she and Dan covered up the murder by disposing of Stanton's body in the shipwreck. When Dan reveals he postponed the ship's removal, Judith becomes hysterical and suggests they should flee. Dan receives a phone call from Jenny imploring him to see her, but when Dan arrives, he finds Jenny dead. He is confronted at gunpoint by Gus, who followed him, thinking Dan must have murdered Stanton. Pleading for his life, Dan convinces Gus to visit the shipwreck, where they find a chemical storage container. Dan dredges up a body of a man who looks exactly like himself. Dan realizes he is not Dan Merrick at all; he is actually Jack Stanton. In a flashback, it is revealed that an abusive Dan confronted his wife Judith with evidence of her

infidelity Infidelity (synonyms include non-consensual non-monogamy, cheating, straying, adultery, being unfaithful, two-timing, or having an affair) is a violation of a couple's emotional or sexual exclusivity that commonly results in feelings of anger, se ...

. She called for help and Jack raced to her home, arriving too late to prevent her from shooting her husband in the head. Jack wanted to go to the police, but Judith convinced him to cover up the murder and hide Dan's body. After doing so, Jack told Judith he wanted out of the relationship. This angered and distracted Judith, who crashed the car. Judith had banked on the chemical dissolving Dan's body, but because it was actually

formaldehyde Formaldehyde ( , ) (systematic name methanal) is an organic compound with the chemical formula and structure , more precisely . The compound is a pungent, colourless gas that polymerises spontaneously into paraformaldehyde. It is stored as ...

, she had preserved it. Gus is shot by Judith and falls into the water. Judith forces Jack to leave with her. She drives erratically down the same stretch of road from the night of the accident, confessing to the murder of Jenny, saying she had figured everything out and had to be killed. She hid the facts from Jack so he would have

plausible deniability Plausible deniability is the ability of people, typically senior officials in a formal or informal chain of command, to deny knowledge or responsibility for actions committed by or on behalf of members of their organizational hierarchy. They may ...

. After the crash, she told the plastic surgeons that the man she was with was her husband Dan. Distracted by a police helicopter, Judith loses control of the gun, and Jack grabs it, demanding she stop the car. Judith decides to kill them in a murder-suicide car crash, but to her shock, Jack immediately rolls out at the last second, and a horrified Judith ends up plummeting to her death herself. The police helicopter lands, and an injured Gus Klein emerges. Gus survived his plunge into the water after being shot thanks to his asthma inhaler. The two board the helicopter, with Gus referring to Jack as Dan, presumably securing Merrick's fortune for him. The helicopter lifts off, flying over the burning car at the bottom of the cliff before flying away towards San Francisco.

Cast

as Dan Merrick *

as Judith Merrick *

as Gus Klein *

(Joanne Whalley-Kilmer) as Jenny Scott *

Corbin Bernsen Corbin Dean Bernsen (born September 7, 1954) is an American actor and film director. He appeared as divorce attorney Arnold Becker on the NBC drama series ''L.A. Law'',

as Jeb Scott * Scott Getlin as Jack Stanton * Judi Maddison as Mary Wilson * Bert Rosario as Rudy Costa * Jedda Jones as Sadie * Debi A. Monahan as Nancy Mercer * Kellye Nakahara as Lydia * Dierk Torsek as Dr. Benton *

Theodore Bikel Theodore Meir Bikel ( ; May 2, 1924 – July 21, 2015) was an Austrian-American actor, singer, musician, composer, unionist, and political activist. He made his stage debut in '' Tevye the Milkman'' in Mandatory Palestine, where he lived as ...

as Dr. Berkus

Production

Filming took place during 1990 in

Culver City Culver City is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 40,779. It is mostly surrounded by Los Angeles, but also shares a border with the unincorporated area of Ladera Heights to the ea ...

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

and on the northern

Oregon Oregon ( , ) is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is a part of the Western U.S., with the Columbia River delineating much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while t ...

coast.

Reception

Critical response

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, 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 ...

, the film has an approval rating of 33% based on reviews from 15 critics, with an average rating of 5.1/10. Audiences polled by

CinemaScore CinemaScore is an American 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 from the data. Background Ed Mintz, who ...

gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale. The film's

twist ending A plot twist is a literary technique that introduces a radical change in the direction or expected outcome of the plot in a work of fiction. When it happens near the end of a story, it is known as a twist ending or surprise ending. It may change ...

has caused a division among the responses given by critics. Several critics find the revelation too ridiculous to accept, while others find it inventive and clever.

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

falls into the former category, stating that the film's resolution is "inconceivably implausible" and that the "screenplay is too clever by half." However, he goes on to say that this quality "is always sort of fun."

About.com Dotdash Meredith (formerly The Mining Company, About.com and Dotdash) is an American digital media company based in New York City. The company publishes online articles and videos about various subjects across categories including health, hom ...

falls into the latter category, calling the finale "a killer

!" and ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...

'' says, "It would be disastrous to even hint at the movie's denouement; a critic could get lynched for giving away an ending as shockingly unexpected as the one here. Let's just say that it blows the top of your head off."

References

External links

* {{Wolfgang Petersen 1991 films 1991 independent films 1990s mystery drama films 1990s mystery thriller films 1991 psychological thriller films Films about adultery in the United States American independent films American mystery drama films American mystery thriller films American psychological thriller films Davis Entertainment films Films about amnesia Films about road accidents and incidents Films based on mystery novels Films directed by Wolfgang Petersen Films produced by John Davis Films scored by Alan Silvestri Films set in the San Francisco Bay Area Films shot in Oregon Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films American neo-noir films 1991 drama films 1990s English-language films 1990s American films American serial killer films American police detective films Films about drugs English-language independent films English-language mystery drama films English-language mystery thriller films