WreckedImagine waking up and discovering that you had been in a terrible car accident--and that you have no recollection of who you are or how you got there. Wrecked is a suspense film about a man (Adrian Brody) who awakens to find himself bloodied and trapped within the wreck of a car with a corpse, stranded in the middle of the woods with no signs of civilization in sight, and without his memory. After freeing himself from the car, he becomes lost in the sprawling and verdant forest. Due to a broken leg, the man is forced to crawl along the earth, desperately searching for rescue while trying to stay alive.
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The protagonist of Wrecked spends almost a week trapped in the passenger seat of the vehicle, and starvation, dehydration, and the pain of his shattered femur takes a toll on his psyche. He becomes convinced that he was a member in a trio of violent bank robbers, two of which were evidently killed after the crash. The man is unprepared to survive in the wilderness, but manages to appropriate the coat of his backseat companion, George (Ryan Robbins), to keep warm and uses the car's removable ashtray to gather rainwater to drink. He discovers a revolver hidden under the driver's seat of the car--fully loaded--and a satchel of money in the trunk. Denied of subsistence and in the throes of pain, the man begins to hallucinate, beginning with a dream he has of a woman (Caroline Dhavernas) on the verge of saving him, who gives him bottled water and trail mix. The fantasy is deliberately framed as though the man just woke up, and makes his recollection of it after he awakens for real a cruel tease that taunts him with the hope of rescue. The phantasm shows up again and again during the man's tribulation in the woods, with an increasing amount of animosity toward the man, as if judging him for some past crime and savoring his suffering. The man believes he may have been a bank robber after he overhears a broadcast from the still functioning car radio, describing the three men by name (one is George) as "on the run" and "armed and extremely dangerous". The man finds a credit card in the car belonging to "Raymond Plazzy", and he concludes that this is who he is. He experiences periodic flashbacks, including one where he is robbing a bank and pointing the same revolver at the forehead of the woman he envisions in the woods. Like the protagonist, Wrecked forces the audience to fill in the blanks about who the man is or what he did that led him to being alone in the forest without his memory.
Because of the protagonist's arduous and even malicious trek through the wilderness, it becomes questionable whether he even survived the crash, or if he is already dead and has been sentenced to an eternity of suffering. His hallucinations haunt him like phantoms or devils meant to torture him; his malnutrition and possible sepsis poisoning may contribute to these visions, but there also seems to be a deliberate attempt to keep him from finding salvation. Consider that he wakes up in a wrecked car, but that he can't locate a road anywhere nearby. (Alternately, the man could simply be a very poor survivalist.) After he first attempts to crawl away from the car, he watches a stranger (Adrian Holmes) with a hunting rifle silently stealing the satchel full of money from the trunk of the car, and then flee without helping him. When the man crawls back to the car, he finds that the same satchel is still there. Was this stranger in the woods real, or another figment of his imagination? The forest is surprisingly absent of wildlife, except for a fearsome mountain cat which scavenges from the corpses of the wreck for its meals; it's clear that when this food source runs out, the man is next. This giant cougar is a kind of "jailer" in this wooded prison--a "hellhound" to keep him terrified and vulnerable in his increasingly difficult battle to survive. The man's sole companion in his "green hell" is a dog that looks as undernourished as Adrian Brody's character. He shares a few moments of joy with the dog, including playing fetch by the riverbank and splits a small piece of jerky he finds in an abandoned haversack with him--generous for someone who was ostensibly was a hardened criminal before the crash. The man tells his new best friend how he had a dog as a boy named "Duke"--a noteworthy detail since the man's memory appears to be coming back to him. Yet the question remains whether the dog is an illusion born from his fractured mind, or may even be another facet of some complex, purgatorial punishment, eternally tormenting him with shadows from a life that he will never revisit. Even the radio becomes suspect; the vehicle is clearly trashed, so it is curious that one of the few coherent broadcasts between the static is about the dead men in the car. The man is made to suffer various trials that never get him anywhere closer to safety, including being swept away by a river after unsuccessfully navigating it in a makeshift raft. Even moments suggesting that the man simply overlooked the road the car came from are preceded by ominous camerawork previously used to signify the onset of a hallucination. The man always appears to be crawling upward, and yet his journey cruelly comes full circle, returning him to the wreck of the car. This man's experience mirrors that of Sisyphus from Ancient Greek mythology--both men are forced to engage in futile and desperate efforts as a form of endless punishment, and the meaninglessness of their labors only makes their respective tortures worse.
Recommended for: Fans of a suspense film that combines the challenges of surviving in the wilderness survival with an amnesia-based mystery. Wrecked is largely a quiet (even lonely) film; the main character is by himself for virtually the whole movie, which contributes to the man's emotional suffering, being isolated in the forest.
Because of the protagonist's arduous and even malicious trek through the wilderness, it becomes questionable whether he even survived the crash, or if he is already dead and has been sentenced to an eternity of suffering. His hallucinations haunt him like phantoms or devils meant to torture him; his malnutrition and possible sepsis poisoning may contribute to these visions, but there also seems to be a deliberate attempt to keep him from finding salvation. Consider that he wakes up in a wrecked car, but that he can't locate a road anywhere nearby. (Alternately, the man could simply be a very poor survivalist.) After he first attempts to crawl away from the car, he watches a stranger (Adrian Holmes) with a hunting rifle silently stealing the satchel full of money from the trunk of the car, and then flee without helping him. When the man crawls back to the car, he finds that the same satchel is still there. Was this stranger in the woods real, or another figment of his imagination? The forest is surprisingly absent of wildlife, except for a fearsome mountain cat which scavenges from the corpses of the wreck for its meals; it's clear that when this food source runs out, the man is next. This giant cougar is a kind of "jailer" in this wooded prison--a "hellhound" to keep him terrified and vulnerable in his increasingly difficult battle to survive. The man's sole companion in his "green hell" is a dog that looks as undernourished as Adrian Brody's character. He shares a few moments of joy with the dog, including playing fetch by the riverbank and splits a small piece of jerky he finds in an abandoned haversack with him--generous for someone who was ostensibly was a hardened criminal before the crash. The man tells his new best friend how he had a dog as a boy named "Duke"--a noteworthy detail since the man's memory appears to be coming back to him. Yet the question remains whether the dog is an illusion born from his fractured mind, or may even be another facet of some complex, purgatorial punishment, eternally tormenting him with shadows from a life that he will never revisit. Even the radio becomes suspect; the vehicle is clearly trashed, so it is curious that one of the few coherent broadcasts between the static is about the dead men in the car. The man is made to suffer various trials that never get him anywhere closer to safety, including being swept away by a river after unsuccessfully navigating it in a makeshift raft. Even moments suggesting that the man simply overlooked the road the car came from are preceded by ominous camerawork previously used to signify the onset of a hallucination. The man always appears to be crawling upward, and yet his journey cruelly comes full circle, returning him to the wreck of the car. This man's experience mirrors that of Sisyphus from Ancient Greek mythology--both men are forced to engage in futile and desperate efforts as a form of endless punishment, and the meaninglessness of their labors only makes their respective tortures worse.
Recommended for: Fans of a suspense film that combines the challenges of surviving in the wilderness survival with an amnesia-based mystery. Wrecked is largely a quiet (even lonely) film; the main character is by himself for virtually the whole movie, which contributes to the man's emotional suffering, being isolated in the forest.