Review: Revenge thriller 'Unhinged' is loud, bloody and too ready to rationalize its main character's psychotic behavior

It will be unfair, of course, that “Unhinged” will be judged by a different standard than other movies — solely because, due to the COVID-19 pandemic wreaking havoc on the movie-release schedule, there are no other movies.

Something had to be the first one out of the gate, and “Unhinged” is it: A loud, angry revenge thriller that wants to be a symbol of our faded social contract — but instead constructs too many straw-man arguments to be as thought-provoking as it intends to be.

Russell Crowe is the star here, identified in the credits only as “Man” — he gives a name at one point, but it could be a lie — and presumably standing in for any guy on his worst day. We’re introduced to him sitting in his pickup truck, on a rainy 4 a.m., outside a house. After some preparation, we see him take a sledgehammer to the house’s door, and then to the man and woman who live there. He then torches the house and drives away.

The script, by Carl Ellsworth (“Disturbia,” “Red Eye”), provides some background details about who the couple was, and what connection they may have to Man. But that’s all making excuses, trying to rationalize the irrational. This Man is a psychopath, that’s pretty firmly established, and woe to anyone who makes him angry.

Which is where Rachel (Caren Pistorius), a hairdresser and about-to-be-divorced single mom racing to get her son Kyle (Gabriel Bateman) to school, enters the picture. At an intersection, a truck in front of Rachel’s Volvo doesn’t move at the green light. Rachel honks her horn and pulls around. The truck catches up to Rachel and Kyle, and our Man rolls down his window, demanding an apology from Rachel. When he doesn’t get one, the rage and the gamesmanship begin.

German-born director Derrick Borte can piece together a good car chase, and ratchets up the tension as the Man’s boiling temper and misplaced sense of white male entitlement spills over in increasingly lethal ways.

But Borte can’t make Crowe’s character into anything more than a collection of his tics and mannerisms — and Crowe, sporting a lumberjack beard and maybe 20 extra pounds, is tossing around mannerisms like confetti. Meanwhile, Ellsworth’s script gives us the details of Rachel’s life in crude chunks of exposition, as if the filmmakers’ next step would be to just have Rachel tell us, the audience, what her problems are.

As the first major Hollywood movie to open since everything shut down in March, “Unhinged” may appear tempting, if only to get out of the house and see a movie for a change. If your standards have atrophied to that degree in the bunker, accept some tough love and know that better movies are coming — and you don’t have to mask up for this mean-spirited mess.

——

‘Unhinged’

★★

Opening Friday, August 21, in many theaters nationwide. Rated R for strong violent content, and language throughout. Runnning time: 90 minutes.