Stuck (Blu-ray / DVD)
Steve Barton
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Reviewed by Uncle Creepy
Starring Mena Suvari, Stephen Rea, Russell Hornsby, Rukiya Bernard
Directed by Stuart Gordon
Distributed by Image Entertainment
There’s no question … when director Stuart Gordon is on the money, he is very much on the money. With his latest feature Gordon hits the proverbial ball not only directly out of the park, but also through the windshield of a … well, maybe I should just start from the beginning.
Things are going great for Brandi Boski (Suvari). She’s about to get promoted at her job, she has what she believes to be a good boyfriend, and her life is unfolding just as she wants it to. That is until a crash collision with a newly down-on-his-luck dude named Thomas Bardo (Rea) forever puts her life into a tailspin. In fact, Bardo ends up flying right through Boski’s windshield after our buzzed damsel hits him while he was crossing the street late at night. What to do? After a few near misses with the law and otherwise, Brandi decides to hide her car, body hanging out of the window and all, in her garage until she can figure out what measure of actions to take.
In a panic she turns to her drug dealing boyfriend, Rashid (Hornsby), hoping that he can help her dispose of the body and the evidence of her crime. But that yields yet another problem for her … Rashid, despite his street thug demeanor, is pretty much a bullshit artist who doesn’t know the first thing about covering up such a heinous situation. What follows is a series of twists and turns that amount to a truly clever film that is nail-bitingly tense, gut-wrenchingly gory, and riddled with enough dark humor to please any sicko out there, myself included.
What a story, huh? The whole situation sounds pretty far fetched, doesn’t it? If you think that something like this could never happen, brothers and sisters, you are wrong. Surprisingly the basis of the story is totally true. A few years ago a woman in Texas hit a homeless man with her vehicle and then hid the car and his body in her garage until he bled out days later. Just goes to show you, man, truth can be way stranger than anything anyone could cook up. Want to know more, like how this dastardly bitch was caught? Good! On to the supplemental material then!
The seventeen-minute long Ripped from the Headlines featurette will answer all of your questions as it takes a behind-the-scenes look at not only the movie but the series of brutal events which inspired it. From there we get three more featurettes — Driving Forces, which consists of interviews with Gordon and writer John Strysik, more interview footage from the Dallas AFI Film Festival, and then finally there’s The Gory Details, which focuses on the film’s bloody effects. All in all, everything totals out to about an hour’s worth of making-of type stuff, but we’re not done there! There’s also a very entertaining commentary with director Stuart Gordon, writer John Strysik, and actress Mena Suvari with a trailer tacked on for good measure.
It should be noted that all the special features discussed here appear in standard definition and are both on the DVD and the Blu-ray editions of this flick. No extra stuff for us this time, but it doesn’t matter; this package is a winner.
Stuck is a movie that will have you laughing one moment and then wincing in perceived agony the next. There were several scenes that left me with my jaw on the floor, and I’m pretty friggin’ jaded. A great surprise and a fine example of Gordon on top of his game. Rent it, see it, buy it, dig it!
Special Features
4 out of 5
Special Features:
3 1/2 out of 5
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