Wrecked

I stumbled upon this 2010 movie titled "Wrecked" by random luck in 2021. I hadn't even heard about it, but seeing that the cover had Adrien Brody on it was actually sufficient to make me want to watch the movie.

So I sat down and watched the movie from writer Christopher Dodd and director Michael Greenspan, and I must say that was I genuinely entertained by what they delivered with this movie.

The storyline is one that you have to experience to fully take it in, as there are some really well-written plot changes along the way. And I totally love the way that writer Christopher Dodd constructed the story here, and then changed the course of the story twice or three times along the way, fully and wholeheartedly throwing me off course and changing the way that I felt about the main character every time. This was just glorious work from the writer.

"Wrecked" is a movie that might not find an appeal with just everyone in the audience I think, as it is a rather slow paced movie, and also a movie with almost just a single actor on the screen for the majority of the time. And there is little dialogue here as well, so yeah, this might not be everyone's cup of tea.

I have to say that Adrien Brody puts on a very memorable performance here with this movie and single-handedly carries the movie phenomenally well with the material he has from the script.

This is definitely a movie that I can warmly recommend you sit down to watch, especially if you like a movie that doesn't just follow a predictable narrative. I have to say that this movie was definitely unique and enjoyable.

My rating of "Wrecked" lands on a seven out of ten stars.

"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

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.

Wrecked is an interesting little low budget film that has a fairly promising premise that should attract the viewers (because the poster certainly won't).

A man wakes up in a car wreck in the woods with no idea of who he is or why he got there, with his only company being that of the dead body in the seat next to him. It soon becomes apparent that help is not coming and he has to get out of the car. But once he's free, his troubles have only just begun, as he finds out that he is not alone in the woods.

There is a lot to like about this little film. Adrien Brody does a great job of displaying how painful and lonely it would be if one was trapped in this particular situation, and of course the film rests on his acting and the great imagery and camera work. The film never becomes too slow, and there is always a new little plot point or clue that leads the viewer on.

Of course one should not go into this film expecting a sordid tale of survival and battles with mountain lions. Instead, what we have is a psychological exploration, where the woods serve as the back drop for all of the character's guilts and desires, and soon we are doubting what is real and what isn't. Think of J.G. Ballard's "Concrete Island" or Stephen King's "Gerald's Game".

While it is ultimately weak with a so-so story, "Wrecked" is worth watching at least once just to enjoy the work of Brody and the fluid flow of the film.

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.