Unlawful Entry is a 1992 Psychological Thriller film directed by Jonathan Kaplan, starring Kurt Russell, Ray Liotta and Madeleine Stowe.
After a burglar vandalizes their home, suburban couple Michael and Karen Carr (Russell and Stowe) are befriended and looked after by local police officer Pete Davis (Liotta) after he installs a new security system. But in the course of time, Pete's ever-increasing attention to Michael and Karen comes to be more and more suspect.
Tropes:
- Asshole Victim: After the terror he caused Michael and Karen, murdering innocent people like Penny, Roy and Leon (the guy he set up for Roy’s murder) and his blatant abuse of power? Nobody is going to be up in arms when Michael fills Pete's chest full of lead.
- Ax-Crazy: Pete.
- Big Bad: Pete.
- Big Damn Heroes: Roger putting up his house to get Michael out of jail is this considering he got Michael out in time to prevent Pete from having his way with Karen.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Pete seems like a friendly, helpful guy and honest cop at first, but his vicious beatdown of Pike, reveals he’s not all the way there in the head. Also in the scene where he has sex with the girl he “pulled over” in the Jeep as he tries (fails) to cope with Michael telling him to fuck off, he shows himself to be a vicious sexist by calling her a useless and sleazy whore and kicks her out of the car, leaving her stranded in a crime infested neighborhood. The sheep’s clothing gradually comes off even more as he stalks the couple and plans to ruin Michael and to steal Karen.
- Bittersweet Ending: Michael and Karen are traumatized by the events of the movie and now have to try to explain what transpired to the police, but Pete is dead and will never bother them again.
- Butt-Monkey: Michael becomes this when Pete's obsession with Karen grows.
- Crazy Jealous Guy: Pete becomes convinced that Michael is not the right man for Karen, and also wants to ruin his former "friend" for being an Ungrateful Bastard after doing everything to help the couple a bit too much.
- Cop Killer: Pete kills his partner Roy after Roy threatens to report him for stalking Karen and threatening to kill Michael. Then he blames it on a drug dealer they were chasing. Said dealer also ends up killed.
- Didn't Think This Through: For some reason, Pete, a lonely and mentally uneducated individual who wants to validate himself through his friendship with Michael and Karen, decides it's a wonderful idea to force Michael to teach the burglar a lesson, rather than just arrest him, which he should have figured would have already pleased Michael and Karen immensely. It comes back to bite him in the ass.
- Dirty Cop: In a attempt to get Michael out the way so that he can have Karen, Pete frames him by planting half a kilo of coke in his house and then has his colleagues arrest him.
- Before that he killed his partner Roy and framed it on Leon, (whom he also killed) a rather harmless petty con-man to prevent Roy from going to the higher ups of the Department about his stalker tendencies.
- Disproportionate Retribution: As if stealing Karen away wasn't enough for Pete, he decides he can't let go of his short-lived friendship with Michael and opts to ruin him over something that was his fault.
- Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: The psychopatic Pete Davies is played by the handsome Ray Liotta.
- Fan Disservice: Michael and Karen having sex? Qualifies for fanservice as you get to see Madeline Stowe’s beautifully shaped naked body. Pete sneaking into the house and then watching the two having sex before interrupting them by flashing his light in their faces is the disservice part. Pete’s excuse is that he was responding to his alarm which Michael rightfully calls bullshit on as he had tripped the alarm himself.
- Pete having sex with the Girl whom he pulled over starts out hot but quickly turns into this when Pete reveals his true mentality disturbed and unreasonably angry colors to her and along with his ill rational, unreasonable and savage hatred of Women.
- Faux Affably Evil: Pete is initially presented as and affable and friendly police officer. However once his true nature is exposed or when something makes him mad he turns aggressive and violent. In one scene when he visits Michael in prison he reassures him to not worry about Karen since he'll take care of her but he's actually taunting him for his sadistic pleasure.
- Genre Savvy: After what he saw, considering that Michael told Karen to stay away from Pete immediately after and then demanding Pete to leave them alone for good, it didn't take long for him at all to clue up to the fact that Pete probably was an obsessive individual.
- Hate Sink: Ray Liotta does a great job of making Pete into one of the most despicable and unscrupulous villains to ever grace the screen.
- Humiliation Conga: Michael goes through a major one after getting on Pete's bad side. Pete first cancels his credit cards, puts a boot on his car, then changes the records to have it show that he has 600 dollars of unpaid parking tickets, ruins his business reputation and scares away his investors, plants about half a pound of cocaine in his house and has him arrested and put in jail which leaves Karen at Pete's mercy. Adding insult to injury, Pete visits Michael in jail to gloat about how "he’s going up be the one to take care of her and provide for her", that he knows what she needs and wants and that if Michael ever gets out that he should look them up..... Fortunately his best friend and lawyer Roger comes to the rescue by putting up the deed and mortgage to his house to bail Michael out.
- It's All About Me: Pete has a very high opinion of himself and thinks just because he’s a cop he can get away with anything he wants too.
- Jerkass: Pete once again.
- Jerkass Has a Point: While Michael was unnecessarily hostile and cold to Pete at the club after all he did for him and his wife, he was correct in pointing out how Pete wasn't taking his responsibilities seriously by taking his overprotective attitude towards the couple a step too far.
- Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: Pete appears to be doing something nice by offering a chance for Michael to get some personal revenge on the burglar who attacked Karen. But it's clear from Pete's behavior that he is just testing Michael, and it's implied that HE is the one who actually wanted to protect Karen, by placing himself in Michael's shoes.
- Ms. Fanservice:
- Karen is pretty dazzling, especially the scene in the pool and later on during when she and Michael have sex, which gets interrupted by Pete. It also helped she’s played by Madeleine Stowe.
- The woman who Pete “pulls over” in the Jeep is also quite dazzling as Pete later on has sex with her in his car but it, of course, is really ruined by Pete being uninterested in her and his blatant and vicious misogyny...
- Never My Fault: Pete makes out Michael to be crazy for turning his back against him after all he's done to help him and his wife, never once bothering to acknowledge that it's because of something HE did.
- Nice Girl: Karen’s friend Penny. You can’t help but shed tears when Karen finds her brutally murdered and stuffed in the closet like trash because she was really the most innocent of all the characters.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!: Michael’s hostility towards Pete at the party. Even though he had suspicions that Pete wasn’t stable but his outburst towards him even when Pete was generous and offered up a good security plan to his investors helps contribute to his already deranged state and furthers his obsession with the Carrs. Especially Karen.
- There's also when he sarcastically tells Pete that he would love to teach the burglar a lesson, completely unaware that Pete would want this to happen because of his infatuation with Karen.
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Pete delivers one to the guy who broke in to the Carrs house after Michael refuses to do so. Even though the guy deserved punishment but Michael felt that Pete went completely overboard and his opinion of the officer sours afterwards.
- Not Good with Rejection: After being more than unimpressed with Pete's behavior the previous night, Michael ends their friendship in the harshest tone the very next day. This only does nothing but result in the opposite effect VERY badly.
- Police Brutality: Pete is very fond of this and has no qualms about it either.
- Police Are Useless: The higher-ups in the LAPD do not take Michael’s complaints against Pete seriously, as they consider Pete as one of their best officers and they feel that Michael is being ungrateful because he put in the security system for the Carrs, took him on a ride-along and caught the guy that broke into their house. Not to mention that he plants about a couple of pounds of cocaine in his house and has fellow officers arrest him.
- Granted, the higher-ups don’t know about Pete’s double life but the fact that they don’t take Michael’s complaints, (which are legitimate) seriously still places them in this territory. It's slightly subverted in the fact that Pete's superior does reassure Michael that they will investigate and take care of any uncovered problems, though the movie doesn't get that far.
- The only one not to fit the bill is Roy, but Pete kills him after he threatens to go to the higher ups about Pete’s creepy obsessions.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: Pete holds some very sexist views and believes all the women he’s been with in his life have been nothing but “useless whores”. He says it to a girl he has sex with in his car (a girl he pulled over to get her phone number) and of course to Karen when he tries to rape her.
- Precision F-Strike: Hilariously and defiantly said by Michael after Pete asks him for the new password after their fight and Pete holding him at gunpoint. “Seven letters. Fuck you”
- Even though it was a very tense scene, the delivery from Kurt Russell probably caused a lot of people to burst out laughing.
- It gets better when you remember that "Fuck you" does indeed have seven letters.
Michael gave him the password outright, and did it in such a way that Pete wouldn't realize it.
- Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Pete tries this on Karen after she tries to shoot him (even though the gun was empty because he took out the bullets) and almost disturbingly comes close to succeeding if Michael hadn’t had shown up in a nick of time.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Roy is the only member of the LAPD to work with Michael and who admonishes Pete for his transgressions. Unfortunately Pete murders him for being the only who really knows.
- Sanity Slippage: Although it's debatable if Pete was even “sane” but after Michael tells him to stay away from the both of them after his roughhousing of the guy who broke into the house, he grows even more obsessed with the Carrs and more determined to drive Michael out to have Karen to himself.
- Pool Scene: Karen is swimming in her pool when she suddenly finds that Pete has invaded her home and was watching her swim. Played as Fan Disservice since, while Karen is attractive, she's very uncomfortable to get out of her pool in her swimwear in front of Pete.
- Rabid Cop: What Pete really is. Despite his initial nice and affable mannerism he's in truth a violent and sociopathic criminal in a police's uniform.
- Screw the Money, I Have Rules!: TOTALLY SUBVERTED. As Pete begins ruining Michael’s finances and his business reputation, Roger tells Michael that Pete’s doing it for money and he suggests him to pay Pete to get him to stop and Mike does offer the policemen $5,000 but Pete reveals that its not the money he’s after or that he’s against it for moral reasons but its because HE WANTS Karen and that he will break every rule in the book and violate every moral code to get Karen.
- Screw the Rules, I Make Them!.: Pete pretty much says this when Michael asks him if he’s going to arrest him for “assaulting a police officer” (when he really told Pete to stay away from Karen, in which Pete punches him in the gut) and Pete says “Arrest you? I could kill you.” The look on Michael’s face says it all.
- Theres No Kill Like Over Kill: Michael unloads the entire clip of his gun into Pete to make sure he stays dead.
- Ungrateful Bastard: Michael openly acts this way to Pete in the club after deciding he doesn't want him around anymore and makes no secret of how much he loathes Pete for his behavior the previous night. This is ultimately what makes Pete snap.
- Villainous Breakdown: Pete pretty much loses all sense of calmness and control when Karen attempts to shoot him as he comes onto her and he violently tries to force himself on her.
- Villainous Crush: Pete towards Karen.
- Would Hit a Girl:
- Pete brutally murders Penny and then smacks Karen after she tries to shoot him and also tries to rape and murder her.
- One of the suspects that Pete and Roy arrests during a domestic dispute who already hit his girlfriend offscreen hits her again and like a dumbass tries to run, but Roy catches him and returns the favor.
- Yandere: Pete is a textbook example. He becomes obsessed very quickly with Karen and Michael's attention and initial idealization of him, and blatantly terrorizes them when they don't submit to his demands.
