I just watched 'Unhinged' (2020) starring Russell Crowe and some woman I hadn't remembered seeing before.
The premise is rather simple and straightforward:
"After a traffic dispute, a single mother must defend herself against a sadistic driver who is hellbent on turning her commute into a ride laced with terror."
Russell Crowe will always be an A-lister for me, so I'm willing to indulge in his unimpressive side projects.
Well, the woman lead has a series of successive negative events happen to her while driving through traffic in what I think is assumed to be LA. Her frustration causes her to mouth off to another driver, who is either Russell Crowe in a fat suit or Russell Crowe having fun for 7 months. That character was shown to have bludgeoned his ex-wife and her new lover in his former house before burning it down and going on the run (I guess he's "on the run" as the primary suspect).
The film uses a recurring theme of bureautratic incompetence and sludge to emphasize her danger (ie "911, oh you say being chased by a known wanted murderer, please hold," etc.). There are plenty of sequences that suspend belief, and even suspend my disbelief! I mean, the whole premise of the setting is that this stressed woman is stretched thin because of traffic, but the cops can't get to any of her relatives before her deranged murderer does. Do they hit her traffic jams, while he's expertly navigating the back roads of these quaint and quiet LA suburbs?
This isn't a 'Falling Down'-style sympathetic anti-hero story. Russell Crowe's character is titularly "Unhinged" and murders a couple of innocents during his angry rampage.
Crowe is Australian and if I recall correctly has a history of fighting and beating people while drunk. I don't imagine he's particularly great to work with as a subordinate. He also has silly money plus eternal fame, and I wonder what would make him take a relative turd of a script like this.
Well, this is a movie to show the women in your life. It's a reset on reality, where a fat, old, dumpy (remember, he's either wearing a tire or Macca'd it up for months!) guy can go absolutely psychopath on you for just laying on your horn. The bit of dialogue early-on has Russell's character saying, ayy love, I'm sorry I spaced out there for a bit, it's been a rough spell for me, do you care to apologize back for the aggressive horn-ing and we go about our ways then? Because this character woman refused and insisted that she was justified to an obviously bigger, stronger, potentially dangerous male resulted in the worst-case scenario for her.
I give the movie a 5.1 out of ten, with the nod above average due to its utility to subconsciously set back the female gender just a tad. Have you ever been mouthed off to by a female driver after a road dispute? I have, and I always laughed in the moment about what would happen if she got what she was asking for.