After a confrontation with an unstable man at an intersection, a woman becomes the target of his rage.

One of the first films to reappear in cinemas once they’d reopened, ‘Unhinged’ is a nasty little road rage thriller starring Russell Crowe at his most, well unhinged. It’s the kind of film that would likely have passed with minimal notice in normal times, but these are not normal times, and ‘Unhinged’ is perhaps one of the first films to have received an unexpected boost from current circumstances. In previous years we’d have called this a B-movie and it is definitely reminiscent of the type of film that was ten a penny in the 80s and 90s, but for all it’s a lot of nonsense, it’s also really good fun and I had a blast watching it.

‘Unhinged’ is a film about a tense cat and mouse chase between a man who is on the run after killing his ex-wife and her new partner, and the single mother that finds herself caught in his crosshairs. It’s 90 minutes long, well paced and it’s a hell of a lot of fun with Russell Crowe clearly relishing playing the maniac at the centre of its story. After some scene setting at the start to establish the characters, we join Rachel (Caren Pistorius) as she drives her son to school, finding herself caught in traffic, which the script makes clear is a regular occurrence. Clearly harassed and caught behind a driver who doesn’t notice the lights have changed, she beeps her horn aggressively and gets into an altercation with said driver (Crowe, of course), who isn’t one to let this transgression pass without incident. What follows is a series of tense car chases and phone conversation where Crowe’s character threatens to hunt down members of Rachel’s family if she doesn’t do as he says. It’s all very over the top and undoubtedly implausible, but there’s enough meat on the bones in the script and the performances to maintain a reasonable grip on my attention.

I really liked how nasty and violent the film was and Russell Crowe made for a terrific villain, and for what it sets out to do, I thought that ‘Unhinged’ mostly succeeded and for me, it’s worth a trip to the cinema.

Rating: 3/5

Directed By: Derrick Borte

Starring: Russell Crowe, Caren Pistorius, Gabriel Bateman, Jimmi Simpson, Austin P. McKenzie and Anne Leighton

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt10059518/