Unhinged movie review & film summary (2020)

But the script from writer Carl Ellsworth (“Disturbia,” “The Last House on the Left”) seeks to exploit the malaise blanketing the nation for cheap and gory B-movie jolts. Rather than explore legitimate feelings of disenfranchisement throughout the United States (which, arguably, led to our current presidential administration), “Unhinged” wallows in such fears and frustrations in tawdry fashion. You’re right to be mistrustful of your neighbors, it seems to say. After all, this is a world where a minor conflict at a traffic light can lead to an all-day road-rage chase with multiple bloody bodies in its wake.

Russell Crowe is the chaos agent driving this paranoid pursuit, literally and figuratively. Known only as The Man—because he could be any of us, get it?—Crowe is mind-bogglingly overqualified to play this thinly drawn character. So much so, that it makes you wonder why he would say yes. But the few pleasures “Unhinged” offers come from the highs and lows he manages to maneuver. The Man is either rampaging with all his bearded, burly might, which is unintentionally amusing, or he’s toying with his prey in a menacing rumble, which is sporadically effective. Like a malevolent Foghorn Leghorn in an oversized pickup truck, Crowe’s character is subtly menacing at first but eventually reveals himself to be impossibly indestructible.

The target of his fury is a harried hairdresser named Rachel (Caren Pistorius), a single mom who’s already having a rough morning by the time she clashes with The Man. Running late as usual, she’s dashing out the door to drive her tween son Kyle (Gabriel Bateman) to school but finds herself trapped in traffic no matter where she turns. Between squabbling with her ex and losing her best client, she’s in an understandably foul mood when she gets stuck behind The Man, and perhaps lays on the horn of her beat-up Volvo station wagon a bit too heavily when he refuses to go on a green light.