![]() He needs an "apology," which he repeatedly demands from Rachel, and he will use his misplaced sense of victimhood and grievance as an excuse to justify increasingly violent behavior. ![]() "I don’t even get a courteous tap?" he asks, dripping with condescension.įollowing the initial fender-bender, The Man turns into the walking personification of a specific strain of male entitlement and rage. Driving her Fornite-loving child to school and dealing with her own messy divorce, Rachel honks at The Man in a way that sets him off. Why is The Man so angry? The movie features a credits sequence loaded up with chattering morning radio voiceover that attempts to give the film a gloss of social context: People are "losing self control" and there's a rise in "aggressive driving." We hear that it's "getting really bad out there" and that there could be an "impending collapse." The Man kills his wife and her unidentified lover in the opening of the movie, but the origin of his conflict with the film's protagonist Rachel (Caren Pistorius) could be the basis for a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode. It's a tautology, a delicate dance between the glands and the emotions that's enhanced by Crowe's bear-like screen presence. He sweats because he's angry and he's angry because he sweats. In Unhinged, which opens with Crowe rhythmically grunting and ceremoniously tossing his wedding ring over his shoulder in a moving display of divorced energy, the sweat itself, dripping off his beard and gathering in his armpits, becomes an essential part of Crowe's homicidal character. Think of Ben Stiller on the basketball court in Along Came Polly or William Hurt and Kathleen Turner in the bedroom in Body Heat. In most films, sweat is typically a sign of either athletic or sexual prowess. What Unhinged lacks in wit, good taste, or nuance, it makes up for with sweet, sweet perspiration. Critics mostly dismissed the film, which earned an unspectacular 47% on Rotten Tomatoes, but director Derrick Borte and screenwriter Carl Ellsworth created a piece of carsploitation schlock that deserves a second (or, in most cases, a first) look, now that it's available to rent. While Tenet was viewed as a bellwether for an entire mode of popular entertainment, a quasi-event that earned endorsements from cultural figures like Tom Cruise and Travis Scott, Unhinged was largely ignored-meaning Americans missed out on the dampest movie of the year. In the film, Crowe plays "The Man," a divorced guy with three distinct passions: terrorizing other drivers on the road in his big truck, popping pills in the car, and sweating through his button-down. Around the time of Tenet's publicly chaotic release, another movie-a less prestigious and less time-travel-y thriller called Unhinged-also revved into theaters across the country, tempting moviegoers to sit socially distanced in an auditorium for 80 minutes and watch a bearded Russell Crowe do car crimes. On December 15, Christopher Nolan's Tenet, the semi-elusive action blockbuster of 2020, will finally arrive on VOD after debuting in theaters back in September.
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