Unhinged (2020)

 

Director: Derrick Borte

Stars: Russell Crowe, Caren Pistorius

Short Review, no spoilers

Tight little B-movie thriller and another one capitalising on these crap times by opening with a society bubbling with barely controlled rage and violence, peopled by individuals who can’t say sorry and who, on this occasion anyway, pay an extreme price. Russell Crowe is huge (literally) but deftly plays an over-the-top character with admirable control.

Full Review (spoilers)

This film features one of the best tag lines ever (‘He can happen to anyone’) and unfortunately for Rachel (Caren Pistorius), a single mom with financial struggles, Russell Crowe’s ‘The Man’ happens to her when she impatiently pumps her car horn at his truck dawdling at a stop light. What ensues is the mother of all overreactions, even if her retort to his request for better manners is somewhat callous and self-involved.

Crowe is excellent, occasionally bearing an uncanny resemblance to John Goodman when he’s losing his shit. Freshly embittered by a recent divorce from his adulterous wife, we know this guy’s a problem from the opening scene when he uses a hammer to first batter the door of his former house down, then his ex and her male companion, before dousing the place with gasoline and sending it up in flames. Although weighed down by plenty of problems including her own divorce, stranger Rachel becomes his next random victim when, stressed by her lateness getting her kid to school, she fatefully blasts her horn at The Man. With the calculating manner in which The Man conducts the ensuing reign of terror, you come to suspect that this ticking time bomb may have been lying in wait for such a circumstance to embark on his crusade of life-destroying. Following what is an unremarkable and low-level incident of road rage, The Man pulls up alongside Rachel and initially comes across as an old-fashioned gentleman, with his softly spoken Southern accent and gently insistent request for acknowledgement of what good manners are, especially in the face of a snappy response from the dismissive Rachel. Although previously presenting as a disorganised but well-meaning woman with her own shit to deal with, refusing to apologise for her burst of frustration sets her on an excessively punishing path to learning about politeness and consideration for others.

Interestingly, The Man’s extreme measures don’t seem to have any particular effect in this regard – although Rachel fights to save and protect her and hers, it’s worth noting that wider society fall like skittles in the path of The Man’s ruthless rage without much acknowledgement from Rachel, who continues not to recognise strangers in an empathetic or grateful way. When Rachel first realises that this beef with The Man could be an ongoing concern, she barely even looks at the valiant guy who offers to walk her out of the gas station, outside of which The Man’s imposing Ford Dodge truck is spotted looming ominously behind her own station wagon. Done in a pleasingly non-macho or posturing way, the guy comes across as doing a small but nice thing to help a stranger out. A taut scene follows where you’re just waiting for the string to snap, which of course it does – the guy gets run over for his troubles and Rachel is naturally horrified. But this is quickly followed by the first of many car chases and a series of battles, the focus of which is how it affects Rachel and her family and friends as various individuals are caught in the crossfire. Later in the film, Rachel and son Kyle try to gain the assistance of a driving cop, who is obliterated by a cement truck in one of several moments when the film delivers a genuinely shocking moment of violence. Again, Rachel and her son react with horror, but briefly before continuing swiftly on with their escape from The Man. Despite the potential aid these strangers offer, Rachel only really affords these people the same level of recognition as is possible with the blurry figures seen in the CCTV footage at the start of the film and no more.

The film addresses a person’s sense of responsibility, pounding home the possible consequences of a simple lack of cordiality towards fellow human beings. It also critiques the contemporary dependence on communication technology, as blocking interactions between close relatives while simultaneously laying them bare to interference from those who would do harm. This is realised both in the difficulty Rachel’s live-in brother Fred has talking to their mother via video call when she can’t activate sound, and the ease with which The Man gains control of Rachel’s life just by getting hold of her mobile devices. Upon achieving this power over her via virtual means, The Man brings the physical brutality when he murders her lawyer friend in a particularly nasty diner scene, and rams home the responsibility theme when he pushes Fred’s fiancée on to his own outstretched knife, before forcing him to read out a letter of blame to Rachel - over the phone naturally.

As the film juggernauts on to the final showdown, the Nine Inch Nails-esque soundtrack with its electro-industrial tension building is excellent. There are some nice little narrative loops, one of which involves candy cane scissors striking the killer blow, and I enjoyed that the maze-like housing estate of Rachel’s mother’s home is cleverly used to lure and then lose The Man in the final stages of pursuit. Suspension of disbelief is generally managed well, with The Man’s ability to carry out this excessive crusade of vengeance contextualised credibly. Having handled the plot movements so well however, it’s disappointing that this falls down a little at the end in terms of nuts-and-bolts human physiology. Namely that the final showdown involves Rachel and her young son getting punched by the very hefty Man, something that they both recover from quite unrealistically. But hey ho, that’s the movies for you. The ending is also not as witty as it could have been. Naturally, as Rachel and son drive peacefully away, they find themselves in a similar situation to what got them in to this mess in the first place, but this time Rachel’s hand hovers over the horn and she exchanges a look with Kyle. Being that the central message revolves around the reluctance to say sorry (another contemporary concern in wider society), it would have been interesting to see Rachel in a situation where she had to do just that. But this is perhaps a pessimistic movie – as much as there is relief in seeing ordinary citizens drive away with their lives intact after a horrific ordeal, the subtle lessons that might have been learned from an albeit extreme experience are ultimately like dust in the wake of Rachel’s wheels.