Unhinged Movie Review: Russel Crowe Takes Road Rage To A New High

Here's the review for Unhinged starring Russell Crowe, Caren Pistorius, Gabriel Bateman, Jimmi Simpson and directed by Derrick Borte

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Unhinged Movie Review: Russel Crowe Takes Road Rage To A New High
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If harried working-mother Rachel Flynn, played by  the  charming  Caren  Pistorius, had apologized  to  Tom Cooper after a  scuffle  in the traffic,  would he have spared her the  traumatic attack? And if she had been spared  the attack, would we have been spared  the  ordeal of watching  a road-rage  actioner which makes us  long for lockdowns and vehicle-freed  roadways where bicycles replace motorcars and there would be no reason for commuters to honk their horns and blow their tops.

This is as extreme a road-rage drama as it can get with the raging commuter, with serious communication issues,  going at his victim’s family with hammers  tongs and  guns. So relentless  is  the violence, with every weapon from  a gun to a dessert fork being used  extensively,  that I was  left wondering if the  film's only raison d’etre is to thrust violent encounters one on top of another until we are no longer sure who is the  victim.

Admittedly some portions of the cat-and-mouse chase, for  example the one where Cooper  accosts Rachel’s lawyer in an eatery pretending to be her friend, are as close to heartsopping as a pulp thriller can get. But most of  the time we get the feeling Crowe’s  fiendish character is running out of time at our expense.

The  car chases at rush-hour are as interesting as they are expected to be with the emphasis  on tailing bumpers rather than screeching tyres. But there is  something fundamentally  erroneous  with the plot’s moral equilibrium when  the  aggressor keeps out-witting  the  victim  to the  extent that he  infiltrates  her home and  kills her kin. She finally fells him with a knife plunged into his eye. Road rage gets its comeuppance.

And  all this time, what are the cops  doing? Why do the wailing sirens take so long to reach and apprehend  the lunatic? Russel Crowe as a road rager with serious anger management issues is slimy  and psychotic. It’s a long away from home for  the actor who played Noah in Noah’s Ark. I wouldn’t want  to run into him  on the road, or off it nor would I want to  sit through a  film on his hyper-ventilating antics ever again.





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