WRECKED

A man wakes up in a car, in the middle of the forest. The man is injured and has his legs trapped in the wrecked car; in the back seat there is a corpse and a second dead body is outside the vehicle, probably thrown out as a result of the impact. The man does not remember who he is and how he ended up there, the radio talks about a robbery committed by three men, but the memories are fragmented and blurry. Now, the man's only goal is to manage to free himself from that metal trap and survive the cold, hunger, and fierce beasts. A small trend has emerged in thriller/adventure cinema over the last two years where humans are placed in claustrophobic danger, where the most formidable opponent is often nature. "Sanctum" told the story of a group of cave-diving speleologists trapped in an underwater cave complex, "Frozen" recounted the story of three friends left hanging in a cable car seat at the mercy of the cold and wolves, "Buried - Buried" immediately plunges us into a coffin three meters underground with little air and snake incursions, while "127 Hours" is the story of a boy who gets stuck in a Utah canyon, with an arm trapped under a rock. Minimalist stories (well, "Sanctum" a bit less), very few actors on stage (in the case of "Buried" only one!), rather high involvement capacity and perfect example of how the dangers of Nature are among the worst one can encounter. "Wrecked" by Canadian Michael Greenspan rightfully fits into this mini-genre, showing us the terrible consequences of a car accident on the skin of the only survivor, who is also isolated in a forest, at the mercy of the cold, hunger, and wild animals. If the first half hour of the film works quite well, showing a convincing Adrien Brody immobilized in the wrecked car, surrounded by corpses and at the mercy of hopeful mirages, then the film changes and becomes an anomalous and dangerously monotonous survival movie. The desperate condition in which the protagonist of the story finds himself, with his legs painfully trapped between the car's metal sheets, suddenly resolves itself and it takes just a few pushes to the door and a minimum of strength to pull out his legs and our unfortunate character finds himself outside the car. At this point, one wonders why the man did not do earlier what he did, why he waited about two days between hardships and dangers before reacting in that apparently simple and systematic way. From this moment on, since the man is injured in the legs, we see Adrien Brody dragging himself through the forest in search of food, water, and someone who can help him. If some points are gripping - like the encounter with the puma - and others touching - the friendship with the dog that follows him - for the most part, the film is monotonous and also a bit ridiculous, seeing an Oscar-winning actor slithering for about an hour through dry leaves and soil. Adrien Brody, after the triumph with "The Pianist," has found himself accepting perhaps too many films, to the point of not infrequently falling into productions that do not manage to showcase him... fortunately this is not the case with "Wrecked," which instead bets everything on him as the almost sole (swollen) face on screen for a role that is by no means easy and shows a lot of patience on the part of an actor surely very malleable, who here also appears as a producer. Between highs (not many) and lows (more frequent), "Wrecked" literally drags itself towards an ending that, on the one hand, relies on a not too surprising twist, and on the other, finds a not particularly satisfying conclusion. Director Michael Greenspan debuts here in the feature film with a screenplay signed by his partner Christopher Dodd and also availing himself of a beautiful photography with grayish and earthy tones signed by James Liston. Production notes inform us that Greenspan and Dodd initially wanted to make this film set in a post-apocalyptic future, an idea later discarded due to excessive costs, and we wonder if the film could have been better that way. As things stand, "Wrecked" is a mediocre survival movie that settles into a monotonous situation that fails to engage like the recent titles of the same genre. In DVD and Blu Ray Disc with One Movie.