WRECKED (2010)

With Adrien Brody winning the 2025 Oscar for Best Actor for The Brutalist (2024), we thought a review of a lesser-known Brody film that wasn’t well as well-received upon its release was in order. And so…we jump back fifteen years, eight years after his first Best Actor Oscar win for The Pianist (2002), to a film that was shot in just over eighteen days on Vancouver Island. Much like 127 Hours (2010) and Buried (2010), both of which came out the same year to high acclaim, Wrecked is one hell-of-a-fight-for-survival story. We meet Brody’s character as he awakes, trapped with his leg pinned within a crashed car deep in the woods. One dead body slumps behind in the backseat and one lays ahead in the near distance, seemingly ejected from the car. Brody’s character has as much of an idea of what’s going on as we do as we embark on this journey to find out who he is and how he got here as he scrabbles to survive. Similarly to All Is Lost (2013), the dialogue is minimal as we watch a man take one step at a time dealing with his immediate and insurmountable obstacles, both physical and psychological. Brody arrests the screen throughout (as he does) and if you missed it, it’s worth checking out.

WATCH OR NOT: WATCH

Additional musings: While filming, Brody spent the nights sleeping alone in the wrecked car in the woods in order to immerse himself in the character’s mental state.