Unhinged is not the best movie of 2020, but part of the reason I say that is that I’m not really sure what actually qualifies as a movie of 2020. How many films were scheduled to come out this year but got pushed back, first months, then to next year, now possibly to never play on the big screen as more and more go straight to demand? How many got a perfunctory release in a few theaters in luckier states, and perhaps drive-ins for those who can do that? Are David Fincher and Ron Howard’s Netflix releases to be propped up as great new films, even though they’re on the unimpressive medium none less than Spielberg railed against? Should Wes Anderson be celebrated for delaying The French Dispatch indefinitely? Does Wonder Woman 1984’s embarrassing demotion to a paltry dual theatrical/HBO Max release herald the end of conventional cinema as we knew it?
I was first interested in Unhinged just because it was pretty much the only new movie in theaters that had been showing Trolls: World Tour for 4 months. I didn’t see it in theaters myself and I didn’t even know what it was about. Then when I did hear the description I was fascinated because of how unfascinating it was. How basic the premise. And an odd similarity I found to last year’s The Fanatic. Not in what the movies were about but what they were
This is not going to be a flattering description, but it’s an A-list actor schlubing it up to play the psycho in, I’m sorry, a very generic thriller premise…yet somehow as run of the mill as they seem, both films had a strange draw to me. But while I found The Fanatic simply gross, when I did see Unhinged, it stayed with me as entertaining and effective, and rather than giving it a straightforward review, I’m going to be pretentious and try to elevate it into a forced commentary of “this yearism”, the same tired cynical worldview of 2020 we’re all sick of. Enjoy.
Quick rundown, cause it’s not a conventional review: Rachel (Caren Pistorius, a game newcomer) is a frustrated mom going through a messy divorce. After cutting off The Man (Russell Crowe) in traffic and refusing to apologize, he comes after her, terrorizing her friends and family in a stupid, violent quest for revenge. That’s about the sum of the plot. Fairly run of the mill, honestly, kinda predictable, and the result is excellent.
Could it be that Unhinged is the movie of the hour, a lumbering, banal beast, where minor inconveniences are chaotically elevated to melodramatic monstrosities and you perk up at whatever hope you can find? I’m not sure this boilerplate thriller of a psycho behind the wheel has much profound to say, but I’m not sure many people do this year. It’s a loud, angry film, bruising and bruised, and in that it doesn’t speak but growls, grumbles, and spit, it embodies the time, this foul year of our Lord 2020.
Oh, sure, The Man thinks he has something to say. He’s sure he has a lesson to impart, about “courtesy taps” and impolite society. But everyone thinks they’re right, don’t they, be they cop or Karen. And when you have a misplaced sense of moral superiority, you can wrap up your nastiness in that pretense of of some principle and use that justify any behavior, no matter how ugly or irrational. We purposefully ignore the obvious contradictions and hypocrisies that expose our sins. The Man rails against rudeness and then goes on a murder spree. Peaceful protestors oppose racist cops by setting black neighborhoods on fire. Anarchist bootlickers foam at the mouth to defund the police and celebrate state restrictions on church and home. There is a pandemic of strawmen and bad faith. Everyone is angry and everything is tired and nothing makes sense.
Typical in her role as a thriller heroine, Rachel drives and run around, manic, panicked, looking for any avenue of hope or escape. And just like a thriller, one complication follows another. The rug keeps getting torn out. Just when it looks like someone’s there to help, there’s The Man, raging again and tearing down hope. How desperately do we cling to the news for any respite from the plague, any new development or break in the storm. Are the numbers going down? Are the stores open again? Has Congress passed a stimulus? How about a vaccine? But then here’s the latest’s stumbling block, foreboding news of a second wave, or “twindemic”, and The Man is in the house. Rachel just wants to make sure her kids are safe. I want to go back to church. Is that so much to ask?
And how about The Man? What is his problem? The curious way the movie supplies his backstory, or doesn’t, as part of a low volume news story in the background on a TV no one’s really watching, almost sublimely conveys that it doesn’t really matter. He’s a bully who makes life hell for everyone around him and he justifies it because he’s convinced he’s right and it’s for their own good. You know the type. A little bit of power is a horrible thing with that mentality. Some of them wear badges, some of them wear hoods, some of them are in office. The Man has a powerful car and Russell Crowe brawn. The Governors, it seems, have unquestionable authority to close our schools, businesses, and houses of worship. Look what they do with it. Are you “essential”? Is Rachel contrite enough? Like everyone who’d rather go to a super spreader event than simply practice social distancing, The Man swaggers dangerously with his own lack of consideration. Like the former Man of the Year, America’s Mayor, Rudy Giuliani, he will continue to dig himself deeper into a vile and seemingly bottomless hole, no matter the damage to his own self. Like the current administration, he will not accept defeat, no matter how late and how tired we are of the ordeal. Like so many progressive activists who turn demonstrations into war zones, his message is lost in the medium. We’ve put 30 million people out of work, suicide rates have skyrocketed, past the deaths by Covid in some areas, the cops are busting down doors for having too many Jews in the house, and Thanksgiving is de factor outlawed, but still we have to hear the whines that “nobody is taking this seriously”. The Man will kill Rachel’s best friend in public and still think she hasn’t paid the price. Is ANYTHING enough for these people? 2020, meet your poster child.
Russell Crowe lurches through this performance with Down Under burliness and an affected American South accent. A truly menacing mix. The film’s conceit, Duel meets Falling Down, is simple, but quite effective. Unlike for D-Fens in Schumacher’s masterpiece, director Derrick Borte and screenwriter Carl Ellsworth are not asking us to feel sympathy for their antagonist. Yet at the core, he does have an earnest, valid point. Be considerate. You don’t want to aggravate other drivers. You don’t want to kill grandma. This goes far beyond road rage. As in real life, the torments are ludicrously incommensurate with the consequences. Surely wearing a cloth mask isn’t too much to ask to prevent genocide. And if Rachel was just a little more patient, had just waited longer, or apologized, or at the very least, given this man his courtesy tap, couldn’t she have avoided the string of dead bodies that followed?
Well, that’s what they tell us.
The film opens with stock footage of riots, and watching a movie that was surely filmed in 2019, we sadly remember that the aftermath of George Floyd was hardly the first time the country was set on fire. I can’t say what director Borte intended by opening with this montage. Wikipedia says that production was completed in September 2019, and any post-production editing was also likely completed well before the tragedy of Floyd’s death in May and the outrage that followed. Most likely, showing civil unrest and communal rage goes back to the script level, as it illustrates the basic themes of the story. Yet seeing these images has a disturbing resonance in 2020. Is it in bad taste to draw a parallel between a real life crime and the social outcry that followed, creating dozens of more deaths, and a fictional thriller? I don’t think so. I believe that it is possible to articulate real and important themes in fiction. That’s one of the purposes of art. That and entertainment. Escapism- in a time we could certainly use some of that! Maybe desperately accepting and subsequently blogging for a decent meaning from whatever new movie that actually comes out in 2020, expecting enlightenment or entertainment, is as naïve as hoping Joe Biden will save you. But when you run into the theater or rush to order from demand (as I did) a soggy boilerplate just to see something, and it ends up showing you, through a scanner cinematic, a grimy reflection of society’s own ugly now, Unhinged is some of both.