MOVIE OF THE WEEK (8/21/20): UNHINGED
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| "I've got to get home in time to write my angry blog about movie reviews that don't like movies where the main character is just an angry straight white male that wants to rage in the guise of a fake social commentary!" Thomas (Russell Crowe) prepares for his next fatal outburst in a scene from UNHINGED. Credit: Skip Bolen © 2020 Ingenius Media. All rights reserved. |
KEY CAST MEMBERS: Russell Crowe, Caren Pistorius, Jimmi Simpson, Gabriel Bateman and Austin P. McKenzie
DIRECTOR(S): Derrick Borte
WEB SITE: https://www.unhingedmovie.com/
DIRECTOR(S): Derrick Borte
WEB SITE: https://www.unhingedmovie.com/
THE BACK STORY: Rachel (Caren Pistorius) is having a bad day. A hair dresser by trade, her best client fires her as she's running late getting her son Kyle (Gabriel Bateman) to school. As fate would have it, her friend/lawyer Andy (Jimmi Simpson) just let her know that her ex is not playing nice with their divorce proceedings.
Then she gets off the highway and runs afoul of Thomas (Russell Crowe), a man who – as the opening sequence of the film shows – has a bit of a rage issue. (Saying he has a bit of a rage issue is kind of like saying you might want a jacket in Antartica, if you get the drift.)
While Rachel doesn't give much thought to their interaction, it becomes quite clear quite quickly that Thomas did and does. Deeply. And now, he's going to show Rachel just how much he does. For as he puts it, someone is about to get a lesson in what having a bad day really means.
Even if it kills her.
Then she gets off the highway and runs afoul of Thomas (Russell Crowe), a man who – as the opening sequence of the film shows – has a bit of a rage issue. (Saying he has a bit of a rage issue is kind of like saying you might want a jacket in Antartica, if you get the drift.)
While Rachel doesn't give much thought to their interaction, it becomes quite clear quite quickly that Thomas did and does. Deeply. And now, he's going to show Rachel just how much he does. For as he puts it, someone is about to get a lesson in what having a bad day really means.
Even if it kills her.
THE REVIEW: The opening sequence of Unhinged tries to make a point about how we are all becoming angrier and angrier as a society, lashing out at each other all the time with no concern for each other. Then the movie starts – and what you are left with is essentially a bad version of Falling Down meets Grand Theft Auto minus the compelling characters, anything close to a compelling story and a 70s revenge murder porn style slasher featuring the longest minivan and station wagon car chase sequence ever.
Crowe's character doesn't have much to him: He's a loud, boorish, misogynistic straight white male who, after being fired from his job, literally becomes the movie's title: Unhinged, largely because he feels like the world owes him something and – as his character says in the film, doesn't feel like he's worth much, so he decides to blaze a trail of violence against anyone who's wronged him his legacy. It's almost too easy to picture his character trolling women and people of different religious, racial, sexual and gender backgrounds from the safety of his keyboard, completely nullifying the chance of any audience sympathy. His "his way or the highway (quite literally in this case);" it would one thing if the character was shown to to have some sort of redeeming quality to him the way Douglas' did in Falling Down; Crowe's character is a jerk who gets his comeuppance and then decides to lash back out a world he can't handle. It's not fun; it's just watching that co-worker get fired you're afraid of come back and put the entire building on lockdown. He's not charming, he's not clever, he's not intriguing – he's just a straight menace for 90 minutes.
Crowe's character doesn't have much to him: He's a loud, boorish, misogynistic straight white male who, after being fired from his job, literally becomes the movie's title: Unhinged, largely because he feels like the world owes him something and – as his character says in the film, doesn't feel like he's worth much, so he decides to blaze a trail of violence against anyone who's wronged him his legacy. It's almost too easy to picture his character trolling women and people of different religious, racial, sexual and gender backgrounds from the safety of his keyboard, completely nullifying the chance of any audience sympathy. His "his way or the highway (quite literally in this case);" it would one thing if the character was shown to to have some sort of redeeming quality to him the way Douglas' did in Falling Down; Crowe's character is a jerk who gets his comeuppance and then decides to lash back out a world he can't handle. It's not fun; it's just watching that co-worker get fired you're afraid of come back and put the entire building on lockdown. He's not charming, he's not clever, he's not intriguing – he's just a straight menace for 90 minutes.
Then again, it might be easier to enjoy – although that is not the right word – the gore and violence that you are always at least two steps ahead of the characters if Pistorius' was anything other than Casey Becker from Scream with a better health meter. There is nothing about her character you haven't seen before in terms of presentation and no definitive qualities to her performance to make it anything other than "scared woman." The average victim of Michael Myers or Jason Vorhees is more captivating.
Of course, there's plenty of blame to put upon Carl Ellsworth, the film's screenwriter, and director Derrick Borte, too. The paper-thin plot has stale dialogue, largely ho-hum moments in-between the gory ones and the tongue-in-cheek "humor" largely isn't funny. Likewise, the one-dimensional performances are of that "I started this, so I'm just going to see how it ends" variety with plenty of ho-hum "Yup, here's this scene" moments. (To his credit, Borte does deliver one gross but well-done car crash.)
Of course, there's plenty of blame to put upon Carl Ellsworth, the film's screenwriter, and director Derrick Borte, too. The paper-thin plot has stale dialogue, largely ho-hum moments in-between the gory ones and the tongue-in-cheek "humor" largely isn't funny. Likewise, the one-dimensional performances are of that "I started this, so I'm just going to see how it ends" variety with plenty of ho-hum "Yup, here's this scene" moments. (To his credit, Borte does deliver one gross but well-done car crash.)
So, unless you feel like watching a movie where a psychopath mansplains to a woman why she should have been nicer to him, it's best to leave Unhinged alone – unless you feel like leaving the movie theater in rage yourself.
OVERALL RATING (OUT OF FOUR POSSIBLE BUCKETS OF POPCORN):
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