According to the International Movie Database, Michael Greenspan’s debut movie, Wrecked grossed under $5,000 at the box office. For its lead star, Adrien Brody (Best Actor Academy Award for 2002’s The Pianist), this is a far cry from the early part of the decade when his movies like The Village (2004) and King Kong (2005) were each earning over $110,000,000 at the box office. Brody has made some terrible movies since 2005. These have included The Darjeeling Limited, The Brothers Bloom, and The Experiment. The trailer for Wrecked looked intriguing enough. I also wanted to know if Brody had the ability to do what Tom Hanks (Cast Away) and Will Smith (I Am Legend) were able to do successfully…star in a movie in which he is (for a majority of the film) the only actor. After watching the film, there is a reason why Cast Away and I Am Legend each earned $233,000,000 and $256,000,000 at the box office, respectively, while Wrecked brought in less than $5,000.
The premise of Wrecked is simple enough. Adrien Brody wakes up wholly trapped in the passenger seat of a vehicle that has wrecked in a secluded stretch of woods, remembering neither who he is nor how he got there. As he struggles to remember who he is or the events that got him into this predicament, we are presented with flashbacks and half-hallucinations. Part of the problem with Wrecked is our introduction to it. Finding Brody wrecked in a car, covered in blood and scars, instantly grabs our attention and draws us in; it isn’t long before we feel like we’re sitting there, stuck in the car with Brody, while he ever so slowly tries to piece things together.
However, we have no emotional investment in this character without any back story. Why, as a movie-goer, do we care about him or his situation. So while we sometimes twist and turn uncomfortably as Brody tries to move free his leg that is wedged underneath a crushed dashboard or shift nervously as he cringes and groans while trying to slither his way out of the car, we have no reason to care if he lives or dies. We don’t even know if he is a half-decent or pure evil man. Will he free himself from his vehicle? Will he figure out who the dead body in the backseat was? Will he realize if he killed this man or not? Will he figure out who he is? Will we ever care? The backstory is halfway decent but only begins to pick up life once the movie is half over. Then, once it does, it tries to make up for lost time by forcing us to feel an emotion that we may or may not have developed for Brody’s character on our own.
The movie goes from gloomy to dull in the blink of an eye. Brody is decent at times. At other times, he overacts (which he tends to do in many of his movies) to make up for either poor direction, lack of a decent story, or, in this case, both. Brody’s days of carrying a movie on his own (if those days indeed ever existed) are over. I’d prefer to see his career turn to that of a character actor rather than keep producing these seemingly more and more dreadful movies.
Plot 5/10
Character Development 6/10
Character Chemistry 4/10 (It’s a little hard to judge when one actor is on the screen by himself, but if Tom Hanks can bring audiences to tears when he loses a volleyball, Brody should be able to make us feel something besides annoyance as he talks to himself and the inanimate objects around him)
Acting 4/10
Screenplay 4/10
Directing 4/10
Cinematography 8/10
Sound 4/10
Hook and Reel 6/10 (The movie does a great job initially before it feels like its only intention is to bore us.)
Universal Relevance 5/10 (Sure. It could happen. I guess)
50%
There are many worse movies out there. There are many better ones out there as well. Skip it.