thriller film
Thriller film, also known as suspense film or suspense thriller, is a broad film genre that evokes excitement and suspense in the audience. The suspense element found in most films' plots is particularly exploited by the filmmaker in this genre ...
, directed by
Michael Greenspan
Michael Greenspan (born 1974) is a Canadian film director best known for his premiere film, the psychological thriller '' Wrecked'', which debuted at the 2010 Abu Dhabi Film Festival and starred Academy Award-winning actor Adrien Brody and actre ...
, written by Christopher Dodd, produced by Kyle Mann and starring
Adrien Brody
Adrien Nicholas Brody (born April 14, 1973) is an American actor. He received widespread recognition and acclaim after starring as Władysław Szpilman in Roman Polanski's '' The Pianist'' (2002), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Acto ...
A “Man” wakes up, severely injured, in a wrecked car near the bottom of a steep
ravine
A ravine is a landform that is narrower than a canyon and is often the product of streambank erosion.amnesia. Two other passengers are dead nearby. The Man hallucinates about a “Woman” finding him.
The Man scares off a cougar by firing two shots from a revolver he finds inside the car. He hears on the car radio about an armed robbery by a man named Raymond Plazzy. Finding a credit card under the passenger seat in the name of Raymond Plazzy, the Man assumes that he is Plazzy. After a few days, he finally manages to pry his leg free.
The Man splints his leg and crawls around the car. He finds bags of money in the trunk. When he starts to crawl up the hill, a man emerges from the woods and starts to loot the car. The Man tries to stop the woodsman, who just aims his gun at him before he runs away with some of the stolen money. A Belgian Shepherd dog appears, and the Man follows it into the woods. He finds a working cell phone inside a cave, discovering the body of the woodsman, who appears to have been attacked by the cougar. The Man cannot obtain a cell signal.
Frequently hallucinating about the Woman, he finally shoots her with the revolver after realizing the hallucinations have led him back to the car. He then becomes determined to get out of the ravine. After crawling for days, he finds a road and a dead body with a matching photo ID card that says Raymond Plazzy. He then remembers what happened to him: he was running errands with his wife (the Woman) when he witnessed an armed bank robbery, where a security guard is shot and the Man is taken hostage by Plazzy. In the present, the cougar appears and the man kicks Plazzy's corpse toward the cougar, which drags it away. The Man now has a cell phone signal and calls for help.
The man is picked up by a park ranger. When getting in the truck, he asks about the dog, but it is nowhere to be seen. When he clicks his seat belt on, it triggers a memory of putting on his seatbelt while Plazzy and his two fellow robbers were arguing, with Plazzy holding a gun to the Man's head. The Man uses their distraction to grab the wheel, causing the car to crash. The scene blacks out.
Cast
*
Adrien Brody
Adrien Nicholas Brody (born April 14, 1973) is an American actor. He received widespread recognition and acclaim after starring as Władysław Szpilman in Roman Polanski's '' The Pianist'' (2002), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Acto ...
as Man
*
Caroline Dhavernas
Caroline Dhavernas (; born May 15, 1978) is a Canadian actress. She is best known in the United States for her collaborations with Bryan Fuller. She played Jaye Tyler in the Fox comedy-drama series '' Wonderfalls'', and Alana Bloom in the NBC ps ...
as Woman
*
Ryan Robbins
Ryan John Currier (born November 26, 1972), better known as Ryan Robbins, is a Canadian actor.
Early life
Robbins was born in Victoria, British Columbia.
Career
Robbins is known for his roles as Ladon Radim in ''Stargate Atlantis'', Henry F ...
as George Weaver (Plazzy‘s accomplice)
* Adrian Hughes as Raymond Plazzy
* Adrian Holmes as Man in the Woods
* Lloyd Adams as Eric Stapleton (Plazzy‘s getaway driver)
* Mark McConchie as Security Guard
* Jacob Blair as Park Ranger
Production
At the film's global premiere, which took place on 15 October 2010 at
Emirates Palace
The Emirates Palace (Arabic: قصر الإمارات) is a luxury five star hotel in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. It has been operated by Mandarin Oriental as of 1 January 2020. The hotel project was launched in December 2001 and was initi ...
as part of the
Abu Dhabi Film Festival
The Abu Dhabi Film Festival (ADFF; ar, مهرجان أبو ظبي السينمائي), formerly the Middle East International Film Festival, was an international film festival held in the city of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates from 2007 to 20 ...
, Adrien Brody spoke candidly about why he chose to work on a project with a novice feature film director: "I believed that Michael had the ability to make something special. And I had a blueprint to work with from the script, and in the conversations that Michael and I had. You can't just make safe bets. Even directors and actors who do great work, do not always do great work. And I don't feel like you can wait around until someone of note comes to you and says come work with me. You have to seek out new things that inspire you. The key to this working is that he really didn't have to babysit me. You have to have trust in each other, and I trust Michael."
Reception
''Wrecked'' received mixed to favorable reviews from film critics.
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
rates the film 48% with an average score of 5.3 out of 10, based on 27 reviews.
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...
, which uses a weighted score, gives the film a score of 61 out of 100, indicating "generally favorable reviews", based on 10 reviews.
Writing for
IndieWire
IndieWire (sometimes stylized as indieWIRE or Indiewire) is a film industry and review website that was established in 1996. The site's focus was predominantly independent film, although its coverage has grown to "to include all aspects of Holl ...
and giving it a "B" grade, Eric Kohn calls Adrien Brody's performance "committed" and Michael Greenspan's debut "has the stable definition of a one-act play" but finds the film "falls apart when it starts to repeat itself", but that "Brody's engagement with the material prevents "Wrecked" from falling apart." Kirk Honeycutt of ''
The Hollywood Reporter
''The Hollywood Reporter'' (''THR'') is an American digital and print magazine which focuses on the Hollywood film, television, and entertainment industries. It was founded in 1930 as a daily trade paper, and in 2010 switched to a weekly larg ...
'' calls the film "never less than gripping", saying it "builds tension steadily", "is visually inventive", not tedious, and yet "comes up a bit flat with a perfunctory ending where something more feral or dramatic is needed."
Contrastingly, Brad Brevett describes the conclusion as "interesting", but complains of the film going in circles too much of the time, arguing that the story is too small for a feature film, while conceding that Adrien Brody gives "a solid performance, despite having very little to work with." Alex DiVicenzo concurs: "Christopher Dodd's script would have benefited from a few more twists and turns; something that puts the man in peril but remains grounded in reality to avoid taking the viewer out of the movie. Director Michael Greenspan does the best that he can with what he has, aided in no small part by the fine cinematography by James Liston." In a very brief ''
New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' review, Jeannette Catsoulis also complains that the film moves slowly at first and lacks suspense.