Stuck is a well-intentioned B-movie that provides enough thrills and interesting storylines to make it worth watching.
Mena Suvari is definitely not the girl she played in American Beauty. Here she is Brandi Boski. In the daytime she’s a nurse at a retirement home; at night she’s a party girl who loves her alcohol and ecstasy.
Stephen Rea (The Crying Game) is Thomas Bardo. He’s a man down on his luck. He’s been laid-off, evicted from his apartment, and now lives on the streets.
After partying too much one night, Brandi is driving home and trying to use her cell phone, all the while being high, when she hits Thomas while he’s crossing the street. This isn’t one of those standard car-hits-a-person scenes in a movie where the person rolls up on the hood, maybe cracks the windshield, and rolls off. Instead Thomas becomes lodged in the windshield with half of his body inside the car and the other half lying on the hood.
There’s no one around to see the accident, so in a moment of desperation Brandi drives all the way back to her house with Thomas sticking out of her windshield. It’s almost a funny scene if it weren’t so horrific.
Once at home Brandi stashes her car in her garage and hopes to go on living a normal life. Not wanting to jeopardize her impending promotion she neglects to get the man any help. The irony is not lost that she makes her living taking care of people while a man is left bleeding to death in her garage.
Brandi enlists the help of her boyfriend Rashid who is actually one of the most interesting characters in the movie. Rashid would like everyone to think he’s a big bad drug dealer, but when he’s faced with the situation of helping Brandi he freezes. I felt like this was a crucial moment in the movie. He’s not the stereotypical macho character that many other movies portray. He’s actually more disgusted and afraid of the bloody man in the garage as Brandi is.
While the ending is a bit trite, and there are moments during the film where the old clichés of people ignoring the obvious come into play, Stuck is worth seeing. It’s got some very graphic scenes in it, and it’s not for the faint of heart, but it will provide an entertaining night in.
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