For the longest time, Academy Award-winning actor Russell Crowe was most synonymous with playing Maximus the gladiator and the haunted genius mathematician in <em>A Beautiful Mind</em>. However, in recent years, Crowe has shown a different side of himself that proves we’ve been missing the whole picture. Hidden in the strange summer of 2020 sits behind the wheel a different Crowe altogether—one who rams into cars and eerily stalks victims he plans on killing, all because he’s lost it. It’s a Crowe who is free of prestige in the pulpy, unapologetic road thriller Unhinged. Directed by Derrick Borte, Unhinged is about road rage gone wrong, but it’s also a film in which the actor takes a career detour, dismantling his own mythos. While it will never be ranked alongside Master and Commander, Unhinged may be the most revealing performance of Crowe’s later career. It’s raw and untamed, perhaps a reflection of the unease of its time.

Russell Crowe Turns His Movie Star Persona Into a Weapon of Madness in ‘Unhinged’

While the violence in Unhinged is unsettling, it is the film’s casting that amplifies its effect. In the hot seat, you’ll find a sweating, sputtering Crowe full of fury in traffic, far removed from the grandeur of Maximus Decimus Meridius. It is as if Crowe has some newfound freedom that he completely exploits. In this darker, villainous role, he delivers a performance that deconstructs the heroic image he’s cultivated for decades. The film’s opening scene sets the pace for what lies ahead. Crowe appears in the rain behind the wheel of a pickup truck outside a suburban home. With rage registering on his face, he swallows his pills and throws away his wedding ring. Showing signs of psychological turmoil, he takes a hammer from the rear compartment of the truck, smashes the door to the house he once lived in, and kills its occupants—his ex-wife and her new boyfriend—before setting the place ablaze and casually driving off. It is one of the most chilling and revealing introductions of any film.

Throughout Crowe’s career, we haven’t seen him stripped down like that. From Romper Stomper through The Insider and Cinderella Man, Crowe specialized in men of conviction, however warped. Bud White in <em>L.A. Confidential</em> smashed faces in the name of justice for abused women. In <em>Gladiator</em>, his rage is depicted as a righteous weapon. In most of his portrayals, even when his characters make an error, we understand their anger, even if we don’t agree with their choices. But Unhinged flips the table, with Crowe playing the uncontrollable Tom Cooper, and his only motivation for causing havoc is wounded pride. After an exchange on the highway with a fellow motorist, Rachel (Caren Pistorius), a recently divorced mother going about her business with her son, Crowe’s “Man” decides to make her life hell. He acts like a man who is possessed, stalking her and brutally dealing with anyone he perceives to be standing in his way. In his world, there is no justification, only consequences. His portrayal offers no humanity, and there’s no redemptive spark that we’ve seen with his other roles. This flip of role, the physicality, and the intensity he brings to it are what stand out in the film.

‘Unhinged’ Captured the Pandemic’s Boiling-Point Rage Better Than We Realized

Unhinged was one of the first movies to hit theaters as the world tentatively reopened after months of lockdown. At that moment, the film’s premise of a simple encounter spiraling into chaos was in tune with the mood outside the cinema. Without a clear pathway out of the COVID-19 situation, many people were anxious and easily provoked, with studies showing a growing rage where small inconveniences could easily turn into meltdowns. The mental picture of how the audience watched Unhinged—sitting in a dark theater, masked and distanced while onscreen Russell Crowe embodied their barely contained fury—is at once unsettling and cathartic. The film was a reflection of the collective tension everyone was carrying.

Crowe’s nameless man may be the movie’s villain, but he is also a symbol of what happens to people when isolation and frustration curdle into violence. Caren Pistorius’ Rachel symbolizes the everywoman, forced into a fight for survival that they didn’t see coming. Their onscreen cat-and-mouse game is thrilling, but it is also a metaphor for the uncertainty of 2020.

Unhinged will never headline a Russell Crowe career retrospective, and perhaps it shouldn’t. Its ambitions are modest, and its story is stripped to bare metal. But it stays true to its title when it comes to Crowe’s performance, which is absolutely unhinged. Crowe proves that he’s as compelling in the gutter as he is in the gladiator’s arena.