Derrick Borte’s UNHINGED explores a What If story of road raging gone to the very extreme. The chronically-late Rachel (Caren Pistorius) is on her way to drop her son Kyle (Gabriel Bateman) off at school when she hooks at a car in front of her that is not driving despite the light turning green. Behind the wheel of the big, grey 4x4 is a driver (Russel Crowe) who gets enraged by Rachel’s refusal to apologize after he did just that to her. What follows is a non-stop chase fuelled by the Stranger’s wrath towards Rachel. Desperately set on teaching her a lesson, the stranger doesn’t just go after her, but everyone she loves.

In a cinematic world and story, there’s this term called Suspension of Disbelief, which is basically an acceptance and willing ignorance towards certain illogical or surreal events that the viewer believes in for the sake of the story. UNHINGED tries to set up a world in which a psychotic road-rager, like the one we see, as the result of “an increase of violence on the streets”. Within the first scene, we get to observe this bitter, psychotic, and broken man that does not back down from harming people who hurt him, as he kills his ex-wife and her new boyfriend. Immediately afterward, we get a drawn-out and overly long montage of news clips showcasing various acts of road rage that try to prime you into a connection between this maniac and people honking at each other. 

While I was most certainly entertained, thanks for asking, the dread of having a message that is not about mental health but more on how we don’t care about each other on the streets feels like an odd parallel to this movie’s release, which much like many people on the street is much more concerned about being first rather than getting there in a safe manner.

All that being said, there are some good ideas in UNHINGED. Especially how Russel Crowe has to be overweight to play this part. Right? Okay, now I’m done trashing it.

Crowe delivers a solid performance. He is certainly able to portray a mostly silent menace being a calm and collected killer that must have drawn some inspiration from Javier Bardem’s Anton Chigurh from NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. Although Crowe is lightyears away from a performance on par with Bardem.

I was caught off guard by the R-rated violence displayed in the film, albeit out of place for the characters, grounded this as a world with fatal consequences. Even though Crowe’s stranger was mostly driving next/into NPC’s that did not seem to react to whatever he was doing. Which I get, it was one of the points the story was trying to make. That no one cares in traffic, but come on… Do you really not realize someone rear-ending someone else's car next to you? Unfortunately, this resulted in more than a few unintentionally amusing moments that were supposed to be thrilling. 

The sound that design, on the contrary, was utterly fascinating. Although that might be a result of my almost five-month absence from cinemas.

UNHINGED is a mediocre action film that tries too hard to have some kind of message hidden in between the loud motors of its cars. It is like Harvey Dent’s two-face in that we deserve it, but we don’t need right now. They probably just really had to push for a release because the Fortnite references were already outdated in AVENGER’S ENDGAME, let alone mid-summer 2020.

★★⋆☆☆

Film Release (Switzerland): 30.07.20 - Film Release (USA): TBD

Film Data: Director: Derrick Borte - Writers: Carl Ellsworth - Cast: Russel Crowe, Gabriel Bateman, Caren Pistorius, Anna Leighton, Jimmi Simpson - 90’ - 2020 - USA - Solstice Production - Ascot Elite Switzerland

Photos: © 2020 Ascot Elite Entertainment AG

UNHINGED is like a dog that sticks his head out the window - it’s entertaining to look at for a while but ultimately cats are better.