‘Unhinged’
“Unhinged” deserves to be recognized as the first full-throated movie — the first pure product of unapologetic Hollywood avarice — to open in wide release since the covid-19 plague descended upon us five months or so ago. It’s nothing but a B movie, nothing but a chance for Russell Crowe and his partners to rake in a little late summer cash, but under the circumstances it’s welcome. It’s not quite like Noah’s dove returning with an olive branch, but it’s a suggestion, if not a sign, that there is a normal coming, eventually.
In that normal, we would probably greet “Unhinged” with a shrug, because the title and the billing tell you all you need to know. Russell Crowe is “Unhinged.” He’s mean, brutal and really convincing — I’m not sure I’ve seen a better acting job this year.
While it’s in service of a not-very-special movie — ugly and loud and visceral, one of those cheapies shot in and around New Orleans that does everything in its power to seem generic — Crowe’s performance as a wounded white male grieving for the Suburban Lifestyle Dream that’s been stolen from him by a bad faith employer, his ex-wife, her slick divorce attorney and cruel fortune is likely to convince a not-insignificant portion of the audience to actually root for him.
He’s a lot like Michael Douglas’ William Foster in 1993’s “Falling Down,” (arguably Joel Schumacher’s most underrated movie). Foster is a divorced unemployed former defense engineer who, determined to attend his young daughter’s birthday party in spite of a restraining order taken out by his ex-wife, treks across Los Angeles on a hot summer day encountering numerous rude and dehumanizing irritations (such as a fast-food restaurant that changes its menu from breakfast to lunch while he’s standing in line) and meeting them with escalating violence as he enlists the audience’s empathy. While’s there’s a lot to unpack in “Falling Down” — lots of Foster’s victims are people of color — in the end, Schumacher drops the floor away from the yahoos in the audience by having Foster acknowledge that he has been the “bad guy” in the story all along.
And maybe we shouldn’t root for Crowe’s character, who may be named Thomas Hunter (not that it matters, he’s billed in the credits as “The Man”), even if the victim he fixates on, shrill single mother Rachel (Caren Pistorius, who isn’t related to the infamous murderer Oscar, Pistorius being a common name in her native South Africa) really should do better with her time management and her driving. Nobody deserves to be singled out by a homicidal maniac.
That said, she should have displayed more patience and common courtesy. She demonstrated her jerkiness even before she encounters The Man, who’s blocking her battered Volvo’s way in his Ford pickup, sitting zonedout at a light that has been green for a couple of seconds now.
I bet had she known what we know, that the night before, in a driving rainstorm, The Man had chased some hydrocodone with booze, tossed his wedding ring, watched a match burn all the way down to his insensate fingers, then busted into a cozy house on a quiet street,
murdered the couple inside then set the place ablaze. As he drove away it exploded. He didn’t look back.
On the other hand, someone who is nice to a homicidal maniac and rude to a waiter is not a good person.
Rachel is having a bad day; she’s in the middle of an ugly divorce, she overslept, her brother and his girlfriend have moved in with her and her eye-rolling voice-of-reason son Kyle (Gabriel Bateman). She’s short on money, perpetually harried and privileged — one of those people who thinks nothing of passing long lines of traffic by driving on the
shoulder of the road.
Pistorius does an excellent job of portraying her as a selfish symptom of a coarsening society. (Geez, lady, what if The Man had been sitting in his truck at the intersection crying for the beauty of the world? Wouldn’t you feel bad blasting your horn at him then?)
Before we go, allow us to attempt some actual movie criticism here. “Unhinged” works, but only in a limited way and only because of Crowe’s committed and scary performance. “Falling Down” may or may not be genuinely good, but it is a much more interesting film
in that it presents its protagonist as initially sympathetic and slyly pulls the audience into complicity with his crimes. Crowe’s a full-blown monster when we meet him, with nowhere to go.
It would be easy enough to twist this into a political parable or a lecture on incivility (which the filmmakers try to do with a compelling title sequence that follows Crowe’s bravado opening of ruminative violence). After all, you’ve got Angry White Male versus Gig Economy Freelancer. Ford v. Volvo. Falstaffian bluster v. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezian surgical sniping. It’s not worth the effort though.
Like Crowe has said in some interviews, sometimes people just like to see crazy stuff on screen.
“Unhinged” is crazy stuff. And it’s on screen. A lot of big screens. Hallelujah.