By Paul Hall
We’ve all had those days — you know the ones — where nothing at all goes right. But in the case of the new film Unhinged, the bad day is taken to extremes and the moments that are seemingly innocuous are anything but, so buckle up.
While the film opens with a devastating scene, we just don’t know what the 90 minutes that follow have to do with it, until the news trickles in. Rachel (Caren Pistorius) has had a rough time lately. She’s in the process of a divorce, lost her salon and, to make matters worse, today started off with her oversleeping and setting her son Kyle (Gabriel Bateman) up for yet another tardy and the requisite detention. California traffic is slowing things down and even her client she was to visit after dropping off Kyle at school has canceled. You can imagine her frustration at life (California traffic alone would frustrate most). When she is waiting at a stoplight and the truck in front of her doesn’t move, she angrily honks the horn, and that action creates road rage to the extreme.
The man in front of her, Tom (Russell Crowe), is having his own bad day and is quick to snap, leading to an incredible series of events after his request for an apology is rebuffed. The events that follow send Rachel on a race to survive a day that exceeds anything she could have ever imagined and not in a good way.
I was happy to see the opening and closing credits roll for the film. Given our current time, this marks the first film that Hollywood has started to release in theaters. They are taking a chance that fans will come back and check out this intense thriller. So with the opening credits rolling we have the dawning of a new era in movie going. But as far as Unhinged goes, I was more excited to see the closing credits, as I don’t think my heart could take anymore from the briskly paced thrill ride.
Crowe plays a bad guy who reminds us that our villains don’t have to be given extreme amounts of dialogue to elicit panic and fear from viewers. Literally seeing Crowe’s character onscreen made me want to shave my pandemic beard so no one looked at me funny. He is truly a disturbed man in this film, and I get chills thinking of the way his character tormented everyone he encountered.
Rachel is a woman who seems fed up with the world, and Pistorius makes you feel the exhaustion in her performance. She makes you believe Rachel is ultimately tired of it all and the frustration she is feeling bubbles to the surface. I do wish that a bit of her backstory was explored and that Pistorius was given an opportunity to develop with her character, but in the effort to get straight to the action we seem to be missing that element.
Make no mistake, you will feel uncomfortable watching this film. Revenge is something we see in the headlines constantly, and to bring it to light in a violent and very visual format can be hard to watch. But we shouldn’t feel comfortable here. We have all reacted irrationally to things, but what separates most of us from Tom here is the ability to rationally process things.
This is an escapist thriller. Two scenes made me audibly gasp at what unfolded, and I found myself constantly squirming in my seat. I call that a success. Although I would have liked this to open to crowded theaters and huge discussions about the subject matter, it’s a worthwhile addition to the landscape. Keep it together, everyone, even as Crowe is unhinged.
Paul’s Grade: B-
Unhinged
Rated R
Stars: Russell Crowe, Caren Pistorius, Gabriel Bateman
Director: Derrick Borte