After a confrontation with an unstable man at an intersection, a woman becomes the target of his rage.
The first new blockbuster movie to make a wide release opening in the midst of a pandemic should definitely be one that has a huge draw. Academy Award-winner Russell Crowe, as an overly dramatic person who seems intent upon teaching a simple lesson in humanity, is exactly the type that would make one want to go sit in front of the big screen and forget about the fact that in just under five months, the world has gone to hell in a handbasket and anything not pandemic-related is everything we are looking for in a way to release tension. The conflict though is that the one movie we are relying on to be a stress-reliever has an underlying theme that feeds on the impact of a person who has lost everything and has nothing else to gain but the company of those who have or are currently experiencing the same. This, in and of itself, is the byproduct of our current pandemic, which has taken over the world’s stage and has inextricably stolen the livelihood of each person across the globe.
When the film opens, Russell Crowe’s character, simply titled The Man, is sitting in front of a house with balls of sweat streaming down his face while he pops a series of hydrocodone tablets, apparently while contemplating his next move. Before you can blink, the next move is revealed as he picks up a sledgehammer, heads towards the house, hammers his way in and beats the living daylights out of its inhabitants, sets the house on fire, and drives away apparently unscathed by the entire event. Before you can figure out who the victims are or what they have done to deserve this day of reckoning, he rolls into a traffic stop and his next victim is Rachel (Caren Pistorius), a woman who already has an abundance of issues she is working through while creating more for herself because she is late once again taking her son Kyle (Gabriel Bateman) to school, which has a domino effect of making her late for an appointment with a client and afterward, an appointment with the attorney in charge of her pending divorce. Not only is Kyle going to get detention, but in a matter of moments, Rachel is fired by her client and re-arranging the divorce meeting so she can consider new options. When the light turns green and Russell doesn’t move fast enough, Rachel lays on her horn to get his attention and unfortunately never loses it until the end of the film. The pair’s fateful meeting at the stoplight becomes the catalyst for the entire direction of the movie when at the next stop, he asks for an apology and instead of obliging him, as well as her son, Rachel resigns to giving smartass responses instead of taking the higher road and he lets her know, in no uncertain terms, that he is going to teach her a lesson she will never forget.
Crowe’s lesson comes in so many variations of crazy that it is too difficult to describe, other than to say that he teaches it by destroying every thing and every person that she loves, while his only desire is to ensure that the victims know that she is the cause of it. Director Derrick Borte has done a great job in developing Rachel’s character into a highly-skilled survivor, who is going to protect her son, and which in spite of the insurmountable odds, is still trying to maintain control and come up with a plan to be victorious by using her gut and sticking to a plan she knows will work. True to Russell Crowe’s past characterizations, he plays a solid role of a man-beast using mental and physical agility to reflect on an insane desire to take everyone on a thrill ride, never knowing when or how it will end. This film, albeit, chockfull of twists and turns with interesting ebbs and flows, still had a lot of unanswered questions whose answers should have been revealed earlier in the film in order to make sense of where the rage was coming from and why it was so deep. Overall, the film is a thriller that will keep your heart pumping and your mind racing while trying to stay abreast of the unbridled revenge that makes simple road-rage a misdemeanor, compared to these felonious acts that will keep you at the edge of your seat, appreciating the big screen action that you’ve sorely missed!
In Select Theaters Friday, August 21st
