In September 2001, just 17 days after terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center twin towers, barely two weeks after life in America was upended by the worst attack ever perpetrated on U.S. soil, movie theaters reopened for business.
The first film to receive a wide release was the Michael Douglas-fronted thriller, “Don’t Say a Word.”
It wasn’t great. The deadly dull plot involved Douglas having to scramble to unlock a code from a traumatized girl to deliver to a criminal mastermind who had kidnapped his daughter as leverage.
But it did accomplish its mission, which was to bring people back together at a place where they felt safe and free to forget about the horrors of the world outside.
Jump forward 19 years, and once again, life in America has ground to a halt, this time due to a vicious contagion that thrives on people congregating in groups.
And once again, cinema multiplexes find themselves at the heart of a push by society to resume some kind of normalcy.
Only today, the first new film to be released after six long months of sheltering in place isn’t a bland who-done-it, but a visceral blast of relentless rage that feels more like a product of our fucked-up world that’s falling apart all around us than an escapist survival thriller.
In that regard, “Unhinged” more than lives up to its title.
Unhinged
3 out of 5 stars.
Run Time: 90 minutes
Now Playing
It opens with The Man (Russell Crowe) sitting outside of a suburban residence around 4 a.m., popping pills and wrestling with some inner demon. Within seconds, he has forced his way inside, killed two people and started a fire that causes an explosion throughout the home’s first floor.
In a matter of hours, The Man will encounter Rachel (Caren Pistorius), a stressed-out mother battling a traffic snarl as she hurries her teenage son to school and dealing with her soon-to-be ex-husband on the phone.
When Rachel lays on her horn and speeds around his truck after he refuses to move through a green light, The Man’s focus suddenly falls squarely on her. He roars up next to her at a red light. Asks for an apology. She refuses. He ignites.
“I don’t think you know what a bad day really is,” The Man says, “but you will, you’re going to learn.”
What’s most surprising about “Unhinged,” beyond watching Oscar-winner Crowe completely lose himself in a pulpy yarn well beneath his talent, is how effective it is at tapping into our collective frustration at the swirling shitshow taking place all around us.
It’s like watching “Falling Down,” if bespectacled office drone D-Fens were the villain and suddenly targeted a random innocent instead of the societal norms that act as triggers for his righteous fury.
It’s chilling because how many of us haven’t had a moment where we lost our cool behind the wheel and either honked or cursed at a motorist nearby.
And it’s terrifying because this is our reality now.
Every single person we interact with on a socially distanced daily basis could be The Man.
It’s no longer safe to let off steam, vent, shake a fist at the sky or thrust a defiant middle finger to some asshat in a muscle car that’s driving like a douchebag because that could mean an immediate confrontation and a possibly fatal outcome.
“Unhinged” works because it doesn’t need to be more than it is.
It’s a furious movie for a furious moment.
Carl Ellsworth’s script doesn’t even bother explaining the genesis of The Man’s murderous rampage because, honestly, such details no longer matter.
The Man is so pissed at his situation, so indignant at whatever cruel circumstances have left him emotionally stranded, that the only solution is to engage at a level so extreme that the world around him has no choice but to stop and takes notice.
Any of us could be The Man on any given day right now.
Just like all of us could be Rachel too.
Whether it’s wearing, or not wearing, a mask while shopping; keeping safe at home instead of saddling up to a bar; or sending children like lab rats into an uncertain environment where they may help spark a crushing wave of death and illness, there’s no shortage of tipping points to be found.
“Unhinged” is meant to bring us back together after months of isolation, but it’s also a blunt reminder of how bad things have gotten and how great the distance remains to bridge that divide.
John W. Allman has spent more than 25 years as a professional journalist and writer, but he’s loved movies his entire life. Good movies, awful movies, movies that are so gloriously bad you can’t help but champion them. Since 2009, he has cultivated a review column and now a website dedicated to the genre films that often get overlooked and interviews with cult cinema favorites like George A. Romero, Bruce Campbell and Dee Wallace. Contact him at Blood Violence and Babes.com, on Facebook @BloodViolenceBabes or on Twitter @BVB_reviews.
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This article appears in Aug 20-26, 2020.