“I don’t even think you know what a bad day is.” - Tom Cooper
Unhinged is a thriller directed by Derrick Borte. It stars Russell Crowe as Tom Cooper, a man with serious anger issues. When he is cut off in traffic by a woman named Rachel, he makes it his personal mission to make Rachel’s life a living hell. He follows her around in his truck, repeatedly rams her car with his, and causes all sorts of chaos by threatening to kill Rachel and her loved ones until he gets an apology.
When I saw the trailers for this film, I was pumped. “Russell Crowe playing a deranged psychopath on a road-rage-fueled rampage? This could be awesome,” I thought. Boy, was I wrong. Unhinged was incredibly disappointing for me because it had the potential to be great, but it wasted all that potential by displaying one-note characters, terrible dialogue, dull color grading, unconvincing acting, and writing so bad a five-year-old could’ve penned the entire script.
The film is extremely unrealistic. During the car chase scenes, cars are getting demolished left and right. Meanwhile, Crowe’s car takes most of the hits, and yet it doesn’t have a scratch on it. There is a scene where someone is getting murdered in a diner in broad daylight, and none of the patrons jump in to help. They stand around filming the event instead. It’s scenes like this that completely take me out of the movie.
As far as positives go, the film has a pretty cool opening title sequence, and unlike all of the other actors in the film, Russell Crowe gives his all to his performance. You can tell that he is doing the best he can with the material he is given, and because of that, all of the times he’s on screen are very entertaining, albeit in an overly cheesy way.
Unhinged tries to be to this generation what Tarantino’s Death Proof was to the 2000’s, or what Spielberg’s Duel was to the ‘70s, but fails miserably. I wouldn’t recommend this film unless you are in the mood for a movie that you can laugh at and make fun of for an hour and a half. If that doesn’t sound like a good time to you, then don’t see Unhinged.
Rating: R
Grade: D
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