Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.0

Wrecked Blu-ray Movie Review

A crash-course in survival.

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater August 22, 2011

Since his Oscar-winning, star-making turn in Roman Polanski’s The Pianist, Adrien Brody has consistently defied what a Hollywood A-lister should be, and this is precisely what makes him exciting as an actor. You never know what kind of project he might turn up in next. One day he’s stylishly traipsing across India in a Wes Anderson production (The Darjeeling Limited), and then all of a sudden he’s starring in a genetic engineering-gone-wrong sci-fi flick (Splice). The latter half of his career has been defined by his willingness to avoid “safe” roles. This, after all, is the guy who made a giallo with Italian director Dario Argento—who hasn’t exactly been on top of his game these past few years—and then unexpectedly took the gun-toting hero lead in 2010’s Predators reboot. (Who saw that one coming?) He goes effortlessly from comedy to drama to grizzled action, from no-budget to big-budget and back again. In his latest film, the semi-successful indie thriller Wrecked, he takes on the one-dude-trying-his-best-to-survive-in-a-cramped-location genre, a type of story made recently popular by 127 Hours and Buried. While Wrecked isn’t nearly as good as either of those films, it is a showcase for Brody’s range and adaptability as a performer.

Wrecked begins post-car crash, when Adrien Brody’s unnamed character wakes up in the passenger seat of a totaled older-model Chevy that’s somehow inexplicably lodged in a deep ravine way out in the middle of the woods. And here’s the kicker: Brody has no idea who he is or how he got there. Yes, it’s the old post-traumatic amnesiac’s dilemma. Immobile, with his leg pinned beneath the dashboard, he can only surmise what happened from what he can see. He’s surrounded by trees. The presumed driver of the car is lying dead some twenty feet away—he eventually becomes mountain lion fodder—and there’s a second dead man in the back seat, who carries a license that I.D.’s him as George. “Are we friends, George?” Brody asks to himself, one of the first lines in a film that’s lean on dialogue.

Days pass in the car. Brody drinks rainwater, struggles to take a leak, and strains to reach a pistol on the other side of the vehicle. At some point, he hallucinates that a woman (Caroline Dhavernas) has come to his rescue, with granola and a bottle of water. She’s just a dream—the product of a fevered mind—but is she a clue to his past? (Hint: Yes, she is, and we’ll be seeing more of her as the film goes on.) It takes Brody thirty nearly interminable minutes of screen time to free his leg and get out of the car—that’s thirty minutes of a film that’s only a slim ninety minutes to begin with—but once he’s out, his man versus nature bout for survival has only just begun. There are raging river to contend with, endless stretches of forest and a complete lack of direction.

The film tantalizes us with the slowly revealed answers to the enigmas Brody’s character is trying to figure out for himself—who am I? Where am I? What the hell happened? To give away specifics would rob the film of any impact it has, so I’ll stick with a vague outline. After catching the tail end of a radio broadcast, Brody comes to question not just who he is, but also what kind of person he is. And this is an interesting proposition; how would you feel if you couldn’t remember your past, but suddenly discovered that you might have been what we would loosely call a “bad” guy? How would this affect your survival decisions going forward? How would it change your conception of yourself?

It’s not a bad premise, but writer Christopher Dodd and first-time director Michael Greenspan don’t quite exploit it as fully as they could have. This is partly because there’s little dialogue and no real way to get inside Brody’s character’s head, but in general the whole effort comes across as stretched out and underwritten. It kind of feels like an unnecessarily long Twilight Zone episode, especially once Brody’s hike through the woods takes on the cyclical qualities of an endless Sisyphean struggle. The ultimate tell-all twist ending comes as slightly disappointing, but the filmmakers leave enough of the story open to interpretation to perhaps warrant a second viewing. (Though I probably wouldn’t recommend it. Once is enough for this one.)

I think Wrecked would’ve worked better as a short film; as it stands, there’s just not enough drama or complications to justify the hour and a half runtime, which is often more tedious and repetitive than it needs to be. That said, there’s reason enough to watch the film in Adrien Brody himself, who is simply terrific as a man who’s been stripped of his identity and forced to survive-or-die in the wild. The early scenes in the car—while they go on for far too long—are as raw as just about anything I’ve seen on film this year. (Barring the nerve-gouging, arm-severing sequence from 127 Hours, which still makes me wince whenever I think about it.) Brody has to simultaneously convey a whole spectrum of emotions— pain and disorientation, hunger, desperation, and fear—and he’s eminently believable. It’s a shame the rest of the film doesn’t quite live up to his performance.

Wrecked Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

You expect most lower-budgeted independent productions like this to be shot digitally these days, but Wrecked actually features some wonderful, good-old-fashioned analog film cinematography, presented here via a faithful 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer. The print is in perfect shape—no specks or scratches, as you'd hope from a film this recent—and IFC has wisely avoided trying to smear out grain with DNR or artificially sharpen the picture with edge enhancement. Neither is needed. The fine-grained image has plenty of natural clarity on its own, amply revealed in close-ups of Adrien Brody's bruised face, his ratty, blood-spattered clothing, and the detailed flora and fauna of his immediate surroundings, from the textured fur of a mountain lion to the crisply defined tree branches and rock faces. Color is rich and saturated without ever seeming too pushed—the woods of British Columbia, where the film was shot, look wonderfully lush—and contrast is exactly where it needs to be. Black levels can be a bit heavy during darker scenes, where grain levels also spike, but both are acceptable trade-offs for the film's realistic aesthetic. (That is, the scenes would look bizarre if they were too brightly lit.) Aside from some light noise, I didn't spot any compression issues worth noting.

Wrecked Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Silence plays a big role in Wrecked—Brody's character is alone with himself for almost the entire film—but not complete silence. The film's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track frequently brings his outdoor environments to life with rich and immersive sound effects. In several scenes, rain pours down all around, and this sounds especially convincing when it patters on the roof of the car. The roar of the river is also impressive; when Brody braves a section of white water, the LFE channel kicks in with thunderous bass response. Of course, there are also several instances of quieter ambience, and these sound great too, even if they don't stand out as much. A braver film might've gone entirely without musical accompaniment, but Wrecked does feature a minimalist score of sorts, which really on kicks in to underscore some of the more tense moments. The sparse dialogue is always clean and easy to understand, and there are no hisses, crackles, drop-outs, or other unacceptable audio errors. The disc includes optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles in easy-to-read yellow lettering.

Wrecked Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• The Making of Wrecked (1080i, 14:28): A decent making-of doc, with lots of behind-the-scenes footage and interviews with Brody and the filmmakers.
• A Day in the Life of George (1080i, 2:04): A short featurette about the prosthetic dead body in the back seat.
• Flight of the Chevy (1080i, 6:43): Crazily enough, the silver Chevy in the film had to be flown into the location via helicopter.
• The Woman's Perspective (1080i, 3:37): Caroline Dhavernas, who plays the woman in the film, tells her side of the story.
• Wrecked Trailer (1080p, 2:12)

Wrecked Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Wrecked faces inescapable comparisons to 127 Hours and Buried, and compared to those two films, it inevitably falls short. Still, it's worth watching, if only for Adrien Brody's ragged performance, which certainly qualifies for tour-de-force status. The film looks and sounds great on Blu-ray—courtesy of IFC Midnight—but I'd suggest a rental rather than a purchase.