Wrecked

127 Hours [2010] and Wrecked [2011] contain similar plots and big name actors (James Franco and Adrien Brody). They are set in a minimal location with a suffocating feel. One is based on a true story; the other is fiction. During the long middle stretch of movie, 127 Hours substitutes emotional highs and lows in the score instead of conflict/action, which Wrecked does a much better job at. A raw comparison of the plots gives 127 Hours a harsh reality, while Wrecked puts us inside Brody's mind of amnesia and hallucination. They end the same, but with a little help from Icelandic post-rock band Sigur Ros, 127 Hours manages to finish on a higher note. One was nominated for best picture, and one gets a shoddy rating on IMDb.

I do not believe the term, "Based on a true story," can cover up moments of less perfection. True stories are not commercial box office hits. That's how "based on a true story" came to be, to fantasize and fictionalize the true story into film mythology. The writer's job is to make a story's conflict much like a concert. If a story contains all truth and is boring, there should be rewrites until we are moved, with bits of conflict that can sensationalize the boring truth.

For this reason, where 127 Hours lags, Wrecked excels, and where 127 Hours must stick to a certain blue print, Wrecked can explore the mind of the protagonist in great depth. Plan on seeing an underrated, captivating, Adrien Brody indie in 2011.

This is going to be a very short review because, frankly, there isn't much to say about Wrecked. The first 20 to 30 minutes of the film consists of Adrien Brody trapped in a wrecked car deep in the forest… For the remaining 65 minutes, we get to see Brody crawling around the forest / wilderness. Throw in a hallucination here and a mountain lion there, and that's the whole film. Not too entertaining, even with the few appearances of the mountain lion – and that says a lot about the approach director Michael Greenspan took with the film.

Despite Adrien being a great actor and doing his absolute best with the script, the film never really delivers on the suspense or the thrills. It's a one-man show that goes absolutely nowhere, and that's not Brody's fault. Greenspan never picks up the pace of the film; he uses flashbacks and hallucinations ineffectively; and tries to build suspense around a story-line that just doesn't have any.

If you want to see a great survival film with few characters that gets it right, watch Frozen, 127 Hours with James Franco, or the classic Cast Away with Tom Hanks.

"Who's Raymond Plazey?" After waking up in a mangled car in the bottom of a ravine with a broken leg the man (Brody) has no idea how he got there. Doing everything he can he tries to escape the car and find help. This movie, much like "Buried" and "Castaway" involves pretty much one character the entire time. Very little dialog and prolonged scenes of trying to open a door make this a hard film to get through. I'm not saying this is a bad movie, but it is very, very slow moving. The acting by Brody is very good and it's worth watching to see him. Much like the movie "Memento" the lead character is going about his life trying to figure out who he is and how he got there. Unlilke "Memento" there is really not much that sucks you in and makes you want to keep watching. I got through it, but it was a struggle. Overall, a very slow moving one character movie that is watchable, and only because Brody does a good job. I give it a C.

Would I watch again? - Nope

*Also try - Bruied & Memento

It might be easy to try and compare Wrecked to Buried or 127 Hours but this wouldn't be really fair because Wrecked has a protagonist who doesn't know who he is and this, due to the circumstances he finds himself in leaves you to wonder if he's a criminal or a good guy.Furnishing new facts to the audience whenever the nameless man discovers it, screenwriter Christopher Dodd gives you the impression you are experiencing the ride along with the nameless man from the very first scene which opens with the man coming into consciousness in the wreck of a car. Brody's raw performance will help you to feel at least moderately hooked throughout the man's distress. Whatever he feels, you'll feel a matching sensation. Tension and suspense are best found during the scenes when he's trapped in the car, it's when he when he frees himself from the car that the plot's boredom begins to rise to the surface and You'll find yourself wanting for more details about the man's past, but instead you merely get flashes of the events that happened before he ended up in the crashed car.It is here that the thinness if the plot is exposed as been stretched, showing perhaps that this would have made a better movie short than a full length feature. Notably the script also lacks any kind off comic relief as a form of levity, Buried and 127 Hours had that. By the third act we find it difficult to care too much about the man due to lack of emotional wallop, albeit the flashback scenes work well enough for the most part and director Michael Greenspan uses some clever cinematography which refused to resort to hand cam shake to provide fake tension. Adrian Brody's performance is captivating but overall, Wrecked starts off suspenseful and intense but fails to hold up to this throughout.

For you never know what is going to happen. I haven't heard anything about this movie and went to IMDb to check out the reviews about it prior to watching it.

Considering them exceedingly bad, I decided to check it out anyway, to make my own mind. Well, I have a few things to say.

It is a slow movie. I understand some viewers might find it annoying.

BUT

If you read the Trivias about this flick, you will learn it has been written without knowing where it was going.

Without being aware of that I too found this movie exceedingly boring, because it lacks proper timing for twists or actions in a way. Knowing that, and if you're not afraid of independent (even experimental) movies, you can go on and you might enjoy it.

If you are a fan of Adrien Brody, you should probably watch this movie as well, because he really fits well in the part of a man knowing as much as the viewer do as the movie begins, sadly he has to fight until the end, and so does the viewer who thought he was in for a special thriller and survival movie like Cast Away and/or 127 hours.

You have to be aware that even though it's quite close to those films due to the subject, you cannot compare at all, for this is, I repeat, a whole experience considering the non- conventional way of writing.

All that to say, if you're looking for some strong thrills watching a man struggling for his own survival, you should probably stick to Cast Away & 127 hours.

On the other hand, if you're willing to witness another type of setting for a man trying to figure out what he is doing here and why, a low budget movie exploring the nothingness as the new standard for making a story, then Wrecked is a movie to watch.

Thanks to Adrien Brody's performance, and the nature of the experimental writing process revealed, this movie deserves a 6 out of 10.