Sean Farrell (9 KP) rated The Girl on the Train in Books
Mar 15, 2018
Witches of East End - Season 1
TV Season
Centers on the adventures of a mother and her two adult daughters, both of whom unknowingly are...
August Folly: A Virago Modern Classic
Book
It's August in the Barsetshire village of Worsted, and Richard Tebben, just down from Oxford, is...
Silent Spring
Book
Rachel Carson's Silent Spring alerted a large audience to the environmental and human dangers of...
The Conspirator (2011)
Movie Watch
Following the assassination of President Lincoln, seven men and one woman are arrested and charged...
Whatchareadin (174 KP) rated The Girl on the Train in Books
Apr 9, 2019
I have been waiting to read this book for a very long time. It has been on my hold list at the library for about 4 months. I couldn't put it down. It kept me on the edge of my seat and I had to know what was going to happen next. There were a lot of shocking things about this book that makes you want to know who the culprit was. Who has Megan and what have they done with her? There were times where I was a bit confused about the different dates. The book goes from present to past from chapter to chapter and from person to person. I found myself flipping back to see where I was in the story to keep myself straight.
Overall, this is a good book. One that I will recommend over and over. It's a great thriller that you will not want to put down.
Great American Crime Stories: Lyons Press Classics
Book
A chilling, thrilling collection of true American crimes, long-forgotten and legendary The Bloody...
Enlightened
Book
A wise person once told me: There's a reason for everything. Sarah Shaw -- pulled off a cliff ...
The Missing (2003)
Movie Watch
The Oscar®-winning team of Ron Howard and Brian Grazer (2001, A Beautiful Mind, Best Director, Best...
Lee (2222 KP) rated Unhinged (2020) in Movies
Sep 2, 2020
We’d already seen just how angry Russell Crowe’s character is (billed as ‘The Man’, although he later introduces himself as Tom Cooper), courtesy of a shocking little pre-credits scene. Sitting in his car at night, rain beating down on the car as he breathes heavily and pops some pills into his mouth. Slowly turning a wedding ring on his finger, he removes it, tossing it behind him onto the backseat. Taking a hammer, he gets out of the car and walks to the front door of the house he’d parked outside, before smashing it down and proceeding to use the hammer on the occupants. He’s clearly not the kind of person you want to get on the wrong side of.
The person that does manage to get on his wrong side is Rachel (Caren Pistorius), who’s also having a pretty bad day of her own. Waking up late on the sofa, we learn that she’s currently going through a divorce, with her ex-husband wanting her house. She’s also late in taking her son to school, so when they hit heavy traffic along the way, it’s the last thing she needs.
At some traffic lights, the large SUV she’s sitting behind doesn’t budge when the lights turn green, so Rachel lets out a series of long beeps on the horn, before eventually pulling around the SUV to continue on her way. Unfortunately for her though, when they hit more traffic further down the road, the SUV pulls up alongside her, and when the window rolls down, we see that it’s ‘The Man’ behind the wheel. He’s calm at first, if a little on edge, but after apologising for his mistake, demands the same from Rachel before they go their separate ways. Unfortunately though, Rachel isn’t prepared to offer an apology. “I need you to learn what a bad day is and I need you to learn how to say sorry” he growls, before Rachel pulls away, believing that to be the end of it.
What follows is an intense game of cat and mouse, as ‘The Man’ relentlessly stalks Rachel through the roads and highways. Just to make things worse, ‘The Man’ manages to get hold of Rachel’s phone and starts to threaten and target her close friends and family. We’ve already seen just how Unhinged he can be, and there’s more of that as the movie progresses and he gets a chance to carry out some of those threats. He’s not just out to kill Rachel, but to give her the worst possible day he can before that moment arrives.
Crowe is suitably menacing – overweight and sweaty, taking out anyone who gets in his way and methodical in his determination to catch Rachel. The movie does try to humanise him a little at times though, as we discover that he’s been through a relationship breakdown, and was laid off work just a few weeks short of retiring, as if trying to provide some justification for his behaviour.
Unhinged comes in at just over 90 minutes and proved to be a real intense, gut wrenching roller-coaster ride. I don’t know if I was just a bit giddy at being back in the cinema for the first time since March, but I found it to be a lot of fun.