I saw the trailer for this one the when I went to see ‘The Gentlemen’ film the other week. I was not keen but decided to give it a go anyway. So here goes. A review – of sorts – for “Unhinged”.

I was right

Well in a nutshell my gut instinct was right. I gave the film the benefit of the doubt however and I suppose it was just about watchable. It is basically a movie about road rage. Although it goes a step further by including a main character – played by Russell Crowe – who is clearly seriously depressed and on some sort of medication.  You see him taking the pills regularly and it is clear that they are not doing him any good whatsoever. Is this a dig at the big pharma game or what? It seemed so to me but the movie never really explored why this guy was so “unhinged” nor how these pills made him worse. It hardly went into it at all which was a shame.

But it seems that this guy lost his job just shy of getting his pension and his wife left him. It was not clear if he got depressed and that is why his wife left him although he hints that she was having an affair. But that may have been because he had become hard to live with… Etc… etc… you get the point?

Crowe’s character is a very unhinged individual however. Yet he seems to be very methodical and premeditated when he plans his moves. I am no expert in mental health but he did seem a bit too composed at times to be so mentally disturbed.

Spoiler Alert: And I mean very disturbed enough to;  break into his (ex) wife’s new home, beat them all to death with a sledgehammer and burn the house down. Yes that level of disturbed.

Alert Over

Basically a woman pisses him off at a traffic jam and road rage ensues. IT gets worse as he decides to “teach her a lesson”. It becomes more like that old movie ‘The Hitcher’. The sort of thing that might scare some people but make others – me being one of them – laugh at times.

There is violence and lots of car chases with pile ups. If they had not filmed those I guess it would have been a fairly low budget movie. But then it is based – loosely – around a spot of road rage. The scariest thing about this film is that in reality there are a lot of people out there on medication who are not the most mentally stable. It would have been a much better production if they had at least gone into that a little bit.

Conclusion

Not one of Crowe’s finest films for me. Those being – in no particular order – L.A. Confidential, Gladiator, The Next Three Days, Romper Stomper, Cinderella Man, The Nice Guys and American Gangster. Those are my picks anyway. But he probably needs the money. As for other actors/actresses?  – Nobody worth mentioning really.

Oh one more thing – not a spoiler alert more of an alert to a spoil! At the end of the movie they play ‘Dont Fear the Reaper’, but not the excellent version (and original) by Blue Oyster Cult. No, they messed up by playing some far crappier cover version by some duo called ‘Keep Shelly in Athens’. I wish they would have!

In short I would recommend that you save your money for another film. Wait for this one to hit the TV screen.

Empty Cinemas

The place was empty again. If this carries on I wonder what impact it will have on Hollywood (and the rest)? So thinking back to a previous post where I mentioned the cinema offering you a private showing for $500… (see that here)

It occurred to me that I had just saved myself $486. If I go to the cinema a lot more maybe I can save enough money to buy a nice boat. Then again…