After everything from 1992’s Romper Stomper to 2005’s errant hotel phone, if you still haven’t learned Russell Crowe is not to be fucked with, let Unhinged serve as your zero-ambiguity lesson.

His newly divorced Tom is, after all, a guy who hammers in the skulls of his ex-wife and her new man in the film’s opening scene, and then burns down her house. (Take that, queen of the harpies!) With depression-level girth, a hair-trigger temper and a Ford truck to compensate, Tom is not in the mood to be honked at mere hours later by Rachel (Caren Pistorius, Mortal Engines), a freshly single suburban mom just trying to get her teenage son (Gabriel Bateman, Lights Out) to school on time.

So, when at a stoplight, she impatiently blares her horn and doubles down on her refusal to apologize, Tom takes road rage to a vengeful extreme, not only upending all traffic laws in the process, but playing serial killer with her friends and family in between rounds of their cat-and-mouse pursuits. His methods of dispatch — such as tying a man to a roller chair and setting it aflame before shoving it toward a cop — lean into the slasher territory of Jason Voorhees at his most practical (and unintentionally comical).

Directed with too loose of a grip on the part of Derrick Borte (H8RZ) to offer true escapism — his attention to spatial awareness is kneecapped and even the foreshadowing has foreshadowing — Unhinged arrives in the tradition of such white-knuckle, forward-momentum classics as Duel and Speed. Note the operative word is “tradition,” because Unhinged isn’t in their league; it belongs further down, even underneath your The Call and Premium Rush, but maybe pulling alongside the most recent direct-to-video sequel for Joy Ride if it knows how to parallel park.

Remove the A-list luster of Crowe — who’s coasting, anyway — and its below-averageness as vehicular entertainment becomes all the more apparent. That’s disappointing because when they work, simple films of a breathless chase tend to be real crowd-pleasers.

Here’s your courtesy tap: Move along. —Rod Lott

In the early 1930s, Hollywood tapped Olympic gold medalists Johnny Weissmuller and Buster Crabbe to play Tarzan. Half a century later, when high-concept action became big box office, studios wanting to shepherd the next Stallone or Schwarzenegger again looked to the middle of the medal podium; within 13 months of one another, moviegoers could see Kurt Thomas in Gymkata, Bart Conner in Rad and Mitch Gaylord in American Anthem.

Had those flicks clicked, who knows? We might have Michael Phelps defending God’s pool as Aquaman or Simone Biles crushing it as Katniss in The Hunger Games franchise. Although I have no evidence, I’d like to think Gaylord’s sophomore slump, American Rickshaw, served as the final nail in this miscasting coffin.

Gaylord’s Scott is a struggling full-time college student who works as a part-time rickshaw driver in Florida. One night, slinky redheaded stripper Joanna (one-and-doner Victoria Prouty) offers intercourse as a tip, which he accepts … until he realizes their shower romp is being videotaped by a thumbless perv (Gregg Todd Davis, Nightmare Beach) who happens to be the son of televangelist Rev. Mortom (Donald Pleasence, The Great Escape). The young Mortom is killed by a towering hulk (Daniel Greene, Hands of Steel) who frames Scott as the culprit, then sets out to kill him, too. Scott need only not get murdered, but clear his name and find that sex tape!

Conspiracy, secrets, homicide, a femme fatale, unlabeled VHS cassettes, AIDS needles — all pretty standard stuff for a thriller of that era, but Sergio Martino is no standard director. Known more for his stellar work in the giallo (The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, et al.), he introduces one weird, wild supernatural element to keep things from being too generic: an immortal Asian witch (Michi Kobi, 12 to the Moon) who helps protect Scott by teleporting a cobra and turning Rev. Mortom into a satanic warthog on live TV — but not at the same time, mind you, because that would be stupid. At least the script offers an ironclad reason for the witch’s kindness: because Scott helped her onto his rickshaw on a rainy afternoon.

Seeing as how American Rickshaw (aka American Tiger) contains nary a pommel horse, the logic in hiring Gaylord is negligible. Then just shy of 30, he looks like a preening preteen, yet is a real wet blanket on screen. His line readings are so wooden, he could have found them near the contractor’s entrance at Home Depot. He can’t convincingly act an sexual encounter in the shower, which he’s certainly had in real life; by contrast, as the antagonist, Greene sells the hell out of a magic key burning straight through his hand like Alien acid, as if he’s lived it a hundred times before, just as Pleasence commits to uncontrollable oinking — ever the professional, no matter how embarrassing. And this one is that, to all involved, to our eternal enjoyment. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.