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Join UsStar Cast: Russell Crowe, Caren Pistorius, Gabriel Bateman, Jimmi Simpson, Austin P. McKenzie
Director: Derrick Borte
What’s Good: It had every scope to preach about a lot of things, but it doesn’t, leaving a subtle impactful message by the end
What’s Bad: It never feels ‘complete’ despite a whole lot of things going in its favour, the thought of ‘they could’ve done it better’ will stick with you after the film
Loo Break: It’s 80 minutes & should be enjoyed on the trot!
Watch or Not?: If you liked the trailer, you wouldn’t mind the film!
User Rating:
We see a bulked up Russell Crowe getting out of his car, going inside a house just to blow it up. Cut to an overslept, late-to-work Rachel Flynn (Caren Pistorius) talking to her best friend/divorce lawyer Andy (Jimmi Simpson) about how useless her ex-husband is. She leaves for work with her teen-son Kyle (Gabriel Bateman) saying goodbye to her brother Fred (Austin P. McKenzie) and his fiance.
Rachel’s heated exchange of words with a driver, Tom Cooper (Crowe), on a jam-packed highway unfolds a deadly road-raging drama between them. Tom isn’t in for an apology or for anything materialistic; he just wants Rachel to learn a lesson as he starts killing her loved ones. How will she stop her? That’s what this tightly edited close-to 80-minutes story packs in.
Unhinged Movie Review: Script Analysis
Playing a psychotic killer, Carl Ellsworth’s dark-toned screenplay helps Crowe to get the tension in his aura right. Carl’s writing leaves no scope of sympathy for Crowe’s brutal killer, which is getting rare these days. Despite tackling one of the real disasters happening in the US, i.e. ‘road rage’, the narration never gets preachy barring a couple of acceptable instances.
Keeping the proceedings short and tight (Editing by Steve Mirkovich, Michael McCusker and Tim Mirkovich) come as a trade-off with not being able to create an emotional connect with the characters. They are thrown in the ring to fight from the very first scene, that kind of feels rushed. For a genre such as this, it’s always good to get some sort of colour palette from the cinematographer. But, Brendan Galvin takes the predictable and done-to-death route of filming this in a ‘Speed’ zone.
Unhinged Movie Review: Star Performance
Russell Crowe bulks up to portray the role of a mentally unstable person on a killing streak in this one. He gets the nuances of his characters on-point, leaving no blank spaces.
Caren Pistorius as Rachel gets a comparatively weak character.& I’m not comparing Apples to Oranges here. I’m not saying she should’ve got an equally intriguing character as Crowe’s psychotic killer, but she should have at least given a fight. She receives the spark, but that gets too late in the story.
Gabriel Bateman’s Kyle is an interesting character in the film, and he gets most of the things right. Jimmi Simpson & Austin P. McKenzie leave a mark but it’ll be limited to just this one film.
Unhinged Movie Review: Direction, Music
Derrick Borte steers this thrilling ride with a few speed-breakers & a lot of gripping moments where you could lose your watching balance. The thrills added the certain characters never come across as forced, hence leaving a long-lasting effect. Borte keeps things basic trusting blindly on Carl Ellsworth’s screenplay, and that comes in as good news.
David Buckley goes all-EDM with the film’s background score. The chase sequences are backed very well with an equally thrilling BGM.
Unhinged Movie Review: The Last Word
All said and done, this is a swift-time-killing movie-machine! Depending a lot on Crowe’s untamed presence, there are well enough twists and turns to keep one hooked till the end.
Three stars!
Unhinged Trailer
Unhinged releases on 13th November, 2020.
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