Mark Reviews Movies: UNHINGED (2020)

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 20, 2020

There is no reasoning with Tom Cooper (Russell Crowe), if that's even his real name. The character is credited, quite appropriately and in a decidedly loaded way, as "the Man." He's the villain of Unhinged, and it is quite refreshing to be able to refer to him simply as the villain and leave it at that.

Sure, there's probably more to the man who calls himself Tom and the character called "the Man," but Carl Ellsworth's screenplay doesn't care. Beyond being an effective and brutal thriller, the film almost seems like a reaction to the long-time trend of attempting to sympathize with, excuse, or even justify the frustration and actions of a slew of anti-heroes. You know the type. They're usually white guys who are angry with society or the system, man. They possess some tragic foundation in being denied a promotion at a job they probably hate or unjustly wronged by some minimum-wage worker or seemingly betrayed by a spouse.

Most, if not all, of that is probably true of Tom. Indeed, we know he has—well, had, within the first few minutes of the story—an ex-wife, and boy, is he just peeved about how badly he thinks she has treated him. To a complete stranger, Tom goes off on a long, unprompted monologue about women and how they betray you and what pains they can be and how the stranger, a divorce lawyer, is just profiting off of the misery of wronged men like him.

During scenes such as this, one might consider how a different story would treat this character—maybe with Tom as the anti-hero or the antagonist portrayed in a sympathetic light. That's definitely not the case here. The prologue shows Tom, grunting and popping pain medication (There's probably a sad story behind that, but again, nobody should care about a minute after the introduction of his addiction), in his pickup truck. He's outside a house, and in a rage, he grabs a pickaxe, knocks down the door, and murders a woman—his ex-wife—and a man—her new partner. Then, he sets the house on fire.

That's the end of what we need to know about Tom, and Ellsworth and director Derrick Borte smartly do end any attempt to understand or explain the character with those multiple crimes. He was probably sad and pathetic before committing double homicide and arson, and now, he's sad, pathetic, and maniacal.

The story, which leaves Tom as a figure of menace and an enactor of violence born from a sense of entitlement, is a lengthy chase. It really stars Rachel, played by Caren Pistorius in a performance that's much better than this material probably deserves—meaning the film is much better for her presence here.

She's a self-employed hair stylist, going through a divorce of her own, trying to raise her son Kyle (Gabriel Bateman) on her own (The father is unreliable and absent), and dealing with a few flaws of her own (She's routinely late, and business and her son's attendance record are suffering on account of it). She hasn't, though, thought about committing any felonies because life is tough.

Her crime, at least in Tom's mind, is daring to honk at him when his truck doesn't move at a green light—after an admirably lengthy grace period. Anyone who thinks the film is a warning about impatience and discourtesy has probably never driven in city traffic before. Rachel comes closer to giving Tom an actual minute than the New York variety of that unit of time (In pre-emptive defense of such thinking, though, the filmmakers do lay on the news reports about road rage pretty thick, so the notion that there is some kind of deeper message here is understandable—just not that one).

Anyway, Tom pulls up next to her car, poorly pretends politeness, and demands an apology. Rachel refuses. Tom pursues her and doesn't stop until the climactic standoff.

That's the premise and general outline of the plot. It's nothing special or unique or especially thoughtful, but in terms of cutting to and finding clever ways to maintain the chase, the film does, as they say, get the job done.

The hook, beyond the continual pursuit, is that Tom wants Rachel to have as bad a day as possible—maybe to understand him or more likely because he's the insane villain in a cutthroat thriller. His plan is to go through the contacts on her phone (which he steals while she's at a gas station—before he murders a guy who gets his license plate to give to the cops) and kill all of the people she knows and loves before someone stops him.

The results are bloody and ruthless, because Tom is, again, the evil villain, played with lumbering but malevolent zest by Crowe. Rachel is, thankfully, no helpless or hopeless cause. She's smart enough, with a little help from her tech savvy son, to figure out how Tom seems to be two steps ahead of her, and every seemingly dumb or thoughtless move on her part is at least explained by her antagonist's cunning (She can't call the cops, after all, when her cellphone is missing or when she's trying to convince Tom not to murder her best friend) or a not-too-distracting contrivance.

As a thriller, there's just enough intelligence, as well as momentum to spare (clocking in at a tight 80 minutes or so without credits), for this material to work. Just as satisfying, though, is that Unhinged sees this particular character as a villain and, without reservation, calls him out as such.

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