Regarding Henry (1991)

Regarding Henry is a 1991 American film drama starring Harrison Ford and Annette Bening, directed by Mike Nichols.

The film focuses on a New York City lawyer who struggles to regain his memory and recover his speech and mobility after he survives a shooting.

Ambitious, callous, narcissistic, and at times unethical, Henry Turner is a highly successful Manhattan lawyer whose obsession with his work leaves him little time for his prim socialite wife, Sarah, and troubled preteen daughter, Rachel. He has just won a malpractice suit in which he defended a hospital against a plaintiff who claims, but is unable to prove, that he warned the hospital of an existing condition that then caused a problem.

Running out to a convenience store to buy cigarettes one night, Henry is shot when he interrupts a robbery. One bullet hits his right frontal lobe, while the other pierces his chest and hits his left subclavian vein, causing excessive internal bleeding and cardiac arrest. He experiences anoxia, resulting in brain damage.

Henry survives but initially he can neither move nor talk and he suffers retrograde amnesia. He slowly regains movement and speech with the help of a physical therapist named Bradley. Upon returning to his apartment, he, almost childlike, is impressed by the surroundings he once barely noticed. As he forges new relationships with his family, he realizes he does not like the person he was before the shooting.

As Sarah thinks it is best for all of them, Rachel is put into an out-of-town elite school for girls, as had been planned but now that she and her father are closer than ever, she is not happy to go. At orientation, he tells her a fib to encourage her to enjoy the new surroundings and people. He and Sarah become much closer, as they had been when they first met. He also misses Rachel dearly.

His firm allows him to return to work out of deference to his previous contributions to its success. Sarah suggests they relocate to a smaller, less expensive residence. As his firm takes away his old assignments and large office and essentially assigns him only busy work, he begins to realize he does not want to be a lawyer anymore either. While he and Sarah are at a dinner party, they overhear several of their "friends" making derogatory comments about him.

He finds letters to Sarah from a former colleague disclosing an affair they had, becomes angry and upset, and leaves home. He is confronted by Linda, a fellow attorney at his firm, who reveals that they were also having an affair and that he had told her he would leave Sarah for her, making him have second thoughts about himself and his relationships.

He gives documents from his last case that were suppressed by his firm to the plaintiff who was in the right all along and apologizes. He then goes back to the firm and resigns, says goodbye to Linda, and realizing that (as Sarah had said) everything had been wrong before but was now so much better, returns to her and they reconcile. They go to Rachel's school and withdraw her and she is overjoyed to be with her parents. As they leave the building, she tosses her school-uniform hat away.