Unhinged

by Robbo

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Posted on 29 April 2021

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Rating -

Unhinged is a 2020 American action thriller film directed by Derrick Borte, from a screenplay by Carl Ellsworth.

The film stars Russell Crowe, Caren Pistorius, Gabriel Bateman, Jimmi Simpson and Austin P. McKenzie.

Rachel Flynn (Caren Pistorius) is driving her 15 year old son Kyle (Gabriel Bateman) to school and she is running late.

At a set of traffic lights, Rachel honks at a pickup truck that fails to go through a green light and speeds past it. The owner of the truck Tom Cooper (Russel Crowe) catches up with Rachel and and a verbal altercation escalates into a small chase before Rachel loses Tom and is able to drop Kyle off at school.

Rachel soon finds herself and everyone she loves the target of Tom.

Unhinged is a good premise, a road rage incident escalating into pure horror as someone you don’t know, have never met targets you and decides to punish you by attacking everyone you care about.

This film feels strangely familiar, think of Duel meets Falling Down and some of the scenes, although extremely brutal are fairly cliched with an ending that is quite formulaic for this genre.

The main problem I have is that I find it hard to be sympathetic towards Rachel so I am ambivalent to what happens to her.

The performances are solid and at 90 minutes running time it’s about long enough.

Overall it’s a nice diversion but nothing to get really excited about.

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