Review: Unhinged

Caren Pistorius got up a little late this morning and is now rushing to drive son Gabriel Bateman to school before heading in for work herself. Meanwhile, a disturbed man (played by Russell Crowe) has just murdered his ex and her new lover and set the house on fire. These two characters will intersect – literally – and get into an argument. She says he failed to move when the lights turned green, he thinks she’s rude for honking her horn at him. This is only the beginning of a very bad day for Pistorius, who now becomes the target of Crowe’s rabid fury. Jimmi Simpson appears briefly as a sympathetic associate of Pistorius who is also unfortunate enough to have an encounter with Crowe.

 

Russell Crowe enters his slumming exploitation movie phase with this 2020 film from director Derrick Borte (“The Joneses”) and screenwriter Carl Ellsworth (“Red Eye”, “Disturbia”, the remake of “Last House on the Left”). Absolute garbage, it’s the biggest mistake Crowe has made since the idiotic “Demolition Man” rip-off “Virtuosity” back in 1995.

 

Basically the film plays like “Falling Down” (which I also loathed) if it came from The Cannon Group, the 80s schlock merchants of nearly every latter day Charles Bronson exploitation effort you’ve seen. Or a really, really unsubtle version of “Changing Lanes” where one of the two leads is clearly in the wrong. Caren Pistorius is a fairly sympathetic and likeable protagonist, and the action is dumb but at least well-staged. Some of the photography looks nice, too. Otherwise, this is an unendingly mean-spirited piece of shit. I despised it.

 

Crowe gives the worst performance of his career, starting off at 11 and ending up more rabid than “Cujo”. What on Earth was he thinking here? It’s a bad film, but Crowe is even worse. He’s frankly embarrassing. I won’t give him 100% of the blame though, the pathetic screenplay has him committing multiple murder and arson in the opening scene. It’s before the opening credits are even finished, for crying out loud. Where can you possibly go from there? I know I’m the guy who says Jack Torrance being somewhat disturbed at the beginning of “The Shining” leant more credibility to his eventual descent into homicidal madness, but I don’t believe Jack Nicholson pitched his performance at 11 from the get-go like Crowe does here.

 

If the film had at least adopted a black sense of humour I might’ve found it slightly less unbearable, but as is it’s worthless. Derivative, ugly junk. It’s not even the fun kind of trash. It’s the pits, a completely unnecessary career move by Crowe. He looks bloated, bleary-eyed and miserable in the worst performance he’s ever given. “The Hitcher” it’s not. I hope Caren Pistorius is able to move on to bigger and better things after this.

 

Rating: D-