There's a certain schlocky appeal to Unhinged, the new thriller from director Derrick Borte and one of the first new films coming back to cinemas, of the same variety as last years' Crawl. It's a cable TV B-movie dressed in the apparel of a real film. It even takes a lot of direct inspiration from one of the most famous of these, Steven Spielberg's feature-length debut Duel. The premise is almost insultingly simple: a young woman having a frustrating morning just happens to piss off the wrong guy in a moment of road rage, and he proceeds to violently stalk her down and terrorize her and her family.
Russell Crowe plays this part, introduced to us as he chokes back pills before breaking into his partners' house, murdering her and her lover, and setting the place on fire. He's big and broad, unkempt and menacing, even as he's behind the wheel of his pick-up truck for much of the movie. "The Man" as he's credited, though he also uses the name 'Tom Cooper', is something of an enigma, preferring blunt force weapons over firearms, and has a psychotic obsession with slights and his own self-serving idea of decorum. All of this considered, but for his capacity for speech, he would be indistinguishable from a slasher movie villain. And Crowes' acting is very much directed to this end. It is admittedly the scariest I've ever seen him.
But that doesn't necessarily make the role a good one. Much has been said by critics far more insightful than I on the patterns and toxic elements of "white male rage" films; that the tiredness of the character type and diminishing returns on his use is increasingly not enough to supersede the often superfluous violence that goes hand in hand with a sympathetic framing of his perspective in a world where angry white men are enacting legitimate terror attacks with alarming frequency. Aside from the ethical implications, these kind of characters and stories are largely just not interesting anymore -far from the subversive studies they may have once been. To a point, Unhinged bypasses this: Crowe's character is never meant to be anything but deranged and despicable, no notion of a warped kind of just motive or appeal to his understanding. Though at the same time he's characterized with a methodical cleverness, a powerful degree of resilience, and even a sense of humour that humanizes him on some level. And more disturbing still, there's a final scene after he is dealt with, where the movie seemingly takes his side on at least one of his convictions.
The object of his monstrousness, Caren Pistorius' Rachel, it should be noted has nothing to amend for -though the film doesn't quite believe that, insinuating through Crowe and the escalated stakes that this is a consequence, however disproportionate, for some wrong of hers. I felt only the deepest of sympathies as Pistorius captured the hysterical terror of being stalked and threatened by a strange violent man. That is where the film works the best, and no doubt strikes close to home (though perhaps not quite to such dramatic lengths) for many young women. It is the grain of truth within the otherwise outrageous thriller, wherein a man can brutally murder someone in a crowded diner and walk away scot free (although perhaps another grain of truth is in how fundamentally useless and incompetent the cops prove to be).
Obviously a film with this premise has as much licence to be as extravagant as it wants. Though its' attempts to be gritty and palpably raw where Rachel, her family, and their emotional state are concerned perhaps clashes too much with ridiculous high-octane beats like a police car being suddenly crushed by a steamroller or gimmicky one-liners from a cheesier time. But while there are shock moments that fulfil their intended purpose, most of the time the film just isn't all that inventive. I alluded to Duel earlier, a far better movie about road rage taken to homicidal ends, and I just can't help but think about how the choices there are that intrinsically stronger. The action is way more artfully built through small signs of hostility, the danger is more real in an isolated environment like a desert, the vehicles are far more distinct looking, the aggressor more conscious of propriety and not drawing attention to himself, and for as suspenseful as Unhinged can get, it need hardly be explained why the mystery of the unseen driver in that Spielberg film makes the pursuit a whole lot more compelling and unnerving. I won’t deny Unhinged has its’ moments of creative adrenaline and genuine immediacy, and to give Borte credit, he effectively relates the suitable intensity needed for the films’ direst points, even if he has a tendency to drag out a couple major beats longer than is appropriate. But it just doesn’t compare to a movie made nearly fifty years ago for a fraction of its budget
Unhinged is a movie not smart enough to earn its’ unpleasantness and not fresh enough to be really worth thinking about. There’s no real rhyme or reason to anything in it either, and though Crowe is good, the film is saying nothing provocative or useful about his stock character. Truly, it’s a movie that belongs as a matinee on Spike TV, as much as its’ nice to be in (socially distant) cinemas again. Most of all, it speaks to the fact that we’ve gone about as far as we can with movies about “unhinged” male characters causing death and destruction; which is why it exasperates me that there are likely a dozen other films like this one waiting in the wings.
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