Unhinged (2020)

Directed by: Derrick Borte | 90 minutes | thriller | Actors: Russell Crowe, Caren Pistorius, Gabriel Bateman, Jimmi Simpson, Michael Papajohn, Austin P. McKenzie, Lucy Faust, Sylvia Grace Crim, Anne Leighton, Samantha Beaulieu, Devyn A. Tyler

Rachel (Caren Pistorius) is having a hard time. She just got divorced, has too little money and too many worries. Her son Kyle (Gabriel Bateman) has to be taken to school and she overslept. To make matters worse, she ends up in a traffic jam. At a traffic light, the gray pickup truck in front of her doesn’t accelerate fast enough, so she presses the horn. In vain. She overtakes the car and doesn’t respond to his apologetic gesture. Not much later, the car turns up next to her in a traffic jam. The driver (Russell Crowe) reprimands her and Rachel gets into an altercation. Not something the stressed Rachel wants. She also lost an important client during the car ride, so the problems keep piling up.

‘Unhinged’ is more exciting than you might expect based on the premise. The film begins with an extreme revenge action by the man who has been damaged in his honor. There is therefore no question of surprise what this man is capable of. However, the way he defies Rachel is more inventive than expected, helped by the little mistakes the nervous woman makes. At the start of the game, or shortly afterwards, the man immediately lays his cards on the table, so that you know what his goal is. The tension comes mainly from the fact that he adjusts the rules of the already unfair game according to Rachel’s moves. The chases are very well done, even when driving slowly through a residential area the tension drips off the screen.

Russell Crowe has never been so one-dimensional and yet he steals every scene he’s in. Those few fragments at the beginning of the film that show what drives him to despair are enough. Caren Pistorius is lucky that her character is a little more fleshed out in the screenplay, but of course the viewer’s sympathy lies solely with her and her clever teenage son. It is a fact that the scenario occasionally stretches credibility. You can choose to take that for granted or be annoyed by it, but the actors make it easy to go for the former. ‘Unhinged’ is an exciting thriller about a situation you wouldn’t wish on anyone. Not even that jerk who cut you off on the highway, the annoying tailgater on that B-road or the motorist who leaves the roundabout without a direction.