7 Ups & 4 Downs From Russell Crowe's Unhinged

By Jamie Kennedy /

2. The Chair Burning Scene

Solstice Studios

There's a particularly harrowing scene around halfway through Unhinged that see's Crowe's character invade Rachel's family home. When there, he beats the pulp out of her brother's girlfriend before pushing her onto the knife said bro (Fred) is holding. Then, Crowe ties Fred up, douses him in lighter fluid and sets him alight right as one cop hits the scene.

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It's all a bit much to take in, and barely fits the character.

Up until that point, all of Crowe's murders aside from the first (which we'll get to in a coming entry) seem random and hurried. They're not meticulously planned out, and therein lies the problem. The way he forces Fred to take the blame for killing his own gal is clever, but the whole tied-up-and-doused thing is far-fetched.

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Obviously, it's a movie, so things are going to be far-fetched. However, this attempted murder didn't fit the rest of the film. It comes across as tacked on because the directors wanted to get a little more arson in there for the sake of it.