Becoming an actor might not have been something Ray Liotta set out to do, but he certainly made the best of it when his career took off. Liotta has starred in some absolutely classic movies, from “Goodfellas” to “Youth in Revolt,” but his career spanned 45 years, and as such, he also has plenty of overlooked gems in his catalog. 1992’s “Unlawful Entry” is one example. The thriller saw Liotta play a crazed cop who becomes obsessed with a married woman. If you want to see this under-appreciated entry in the Liotta canon, it’s streaming at no extra cost on Prime Video right now.

After earning widespread acclaim for playing Shoeless Joe Jackson in 1989’s “Field of Dreams” and Henry Hill in 1990’s “Goodfellas,” Liotta appeared opposite Kiefer Sutherland in the dramady “Article 99.” It was a box office flop that failed to impress critics. His second film of 1992, however, was much better.

“Unlawful Entry” was directed by Jonathan Kaplan, who previously directed Jodie Foster in her Oscar-winning role as sexual assault survivor Sarah Tobias in “The Accused.” With his 1992 thriller, Kaplan told a different woman-being-victimized story. This time, the woman was a suburban wife who became the object of a disturbed police officer’s obsessions. Aside from giving Liotta a chance to chew some scenery, it also teamed him with Kurt Russell, who was stuck with a less interesting role but who made the most of it in a film that deserves more attention than it originally got.

It’s hard to pinpoint Ray Liotta’s most underrated performance, though his vocal portrayal of Tommy Vercetti in “Grand Theft Auto: Vice City” is up there. There’s also Liotta’s only Western, “Texas Rising,” a star-studded miniseries streaming on Prime Video that earned him a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination. But “Unlawful Entry” might be the winner. 

Kurt Russell and Madeleine Stowe play married couple Michael and Karen Car, who become the victims of a home invasion during which the perpetrator holds Karen at knifepoint. When the police arrive, Liotta’s Officer Pete Davis immediately becomes fixated on Karen. Things start innocently enough. Davis forms a friendship with the couple, and Michael accompanies him on a ride-along. When the officer finds the man who broke into their home, however, he encourages Michael to beat him, only for him to refuse. Davis then takes a truncheon to the man in what becomes a brutal beating, prompting a shaken Michael to tell the cop to stay away. But it’s too late. Soon, Davis begins stalking the couple, intent upon taking Michael’s place. 

There were several movies with a similar premise to “Unlawful Entry” at the time. In 1990, a post-“Batman” Michael Keaton appeared in the forgotten thriller “Pacific Heights” in which he played a psychopathic con artist who upends the lives of a San Francisco couple. Then, the same year that “Unlawful Entry” arrived, we also got one of the best erotic thrillers ever made in “The Hand that Rocks the Cradle.” All of these movies featured couples imperiled by a nutcase, but while the latter was a sizable hit and Keaton’s thriller was mostly overlooked, Liotta’s film fell somewhere in the middle.

“Unlawful Entry” made $57.1 million on a $23 million budget, though if you know how the box office actually works, it’s likely the profits were minimal. Still, the film was a decent enough hit, and the reviews were good, too. 

The film maintains a 75% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes to this day and earned praise from several high-profile critics, Roger Ebert included. The reviewer seemingly had a thing for couples besieged by an unhinged cop, as Ebert later gave a perfect score to the mediocre Samuel L. Jackson thriller “Lakeview Terrace.” “Unlawful Entry” didn’t garner quite the same praise, but the critic was clearly a fan of the film’s attempt to remain grounded throughout. “The movie is a thriller,” he wrote in his three-star review, “with all the usual trappings of a thriller, but the director, Jonathan Kaplan, is able to place the story in a plausible world.” For Ebert, the movie had “undertones of a serious social drama” and was seemingly concerned with how “defenseless ordinary citizens can be against someone with a delusion.”

Joe Brown of the Washington Post also thought the film was “acted more intelligently than is usual in this type of cookie-cutter shocker,” and the Austin Chronicle’s Kathleen Maher merely thought it was “fascinating to watch Liotta be a crazy guy.” If these reviews have you curious and you too want to be fascinated by a crazed Liotta, “Unlawful Entry” is available to stream on Prime Video at no extra cost.