"Stuck": a dark look at human apathy

This is just rude:

To harsh a woman's buzz by walking in front of her car without looking, to smudge her bumper by breaking your leg on it, to completely louse up her windshield by falling through it and then getting your blood on her upholstery, and then — rudest of all — not to die promptly so that she can get on with her life.

"Why are you doing this to me?" shouts Brandi (Mena Suvari) at the homeless guy (Stephen Rea) impaled on her car.

A nasty little black comedy thriller and social satire, "Stuck's" premise is more compelling than its sometimes laborious execution. But even though it may seem a long haul at just 85 minutes, it pays off by the time things finally start spiraling into hell.

It's a pulped-up take on a real 2001 incident whose microcosm of our sick self-absorption and lack of concern for others puts it on that Kitty Genovese list of Reasons Why Humans Should Go Extinct. (She was the New York woman stabbed to death in 1964 while lots of neighbors witnessed it and did nothing.)

The perpetrator here is cult director Stuart Gordon, known for his adaptations of horror legend H.P. Lovecraft's work such as "Re-Animator," which are enjoyable but frustrating for the camp he injects — when Lovecraft's horror didn't contain so much as one Cyclopean wink. Lower-key "Stuck" doesn't resemble Gordon's previous flicks so much as a lower-rent "Blood Simple."

In Providence, R.I. (an homage to Lovecraft, and not the crime's actual location in Texas), two lives are doomed to intersect.

Tom (Rea, whose hangdog face makes him perfect) is having the worst day of his life. Jobless, evicted and jerked around Kafka-style at the unemployment office, he can't even get a break from the cop who finds him sleeping on a park bench. He's got to walk across town to a shelter.

Brandi (Suvari, sporting horrendous cornrows) is having a killer day. A compassionate nurse's aide who doesn't flinch when it's time to clean up a patient who chronically soils himself, she's up for a big promotion but still has to toe the line under the increased scrutiny of her demanding boss. She celebrates at a nightclub, drinking and doing ecstasy with her dealer boyfriend (Russell Hornsby).

High and panicking when she intersects with Tom at high speed, she zooms home with the poor bastard hanging in her windshield, and then they're both stuck in their own ways.

While there's no reason to doubt for a second that people are as dumb, trashy, cowardly and immoral in a pinch — and there's nothing wrong with the acting, either — Gordon doesn't quite sell Brandi's quick transformation. His pacing in general is off in a way that makes what should be a taut little B-flick drag, and a supporting cast of lesser-caliber actors adds to the unpolished feel of the whole endeavor.

But stick with it and you'll feel like you've earned a shower.

Mark Rahner: 206-464-8259

or mrahner@seattletimes.com