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'Stuck'

Rating:

JOHN ANDERSON

May 30, 2008

Think you're having a bad day? In this fact-based, black-on-black comedy from Stuart ("Re-Animator") Gordon, Tom ( Stephen Rea) has been evicted from a flophouse, jerked around by an employment agency, rousted by a Providence cop for sleeping in the park and given charity by a smiling vagrant. Then, he's hit by the car driven by Brandi (Mina Suvari), who parks the badly injured man in her garage, sticking through her windshield, while she goes about her weekend. Based on the true case of Texan Chante Mallard (now serving 50 years in prison), "Stuck" is genuinely suspenseful and grotesque. It may make you wonder why anyone thought it had to be made, but it is absorbingly macabre. If " Jerry Springer" wasn't enough to convince audiences of the depths of human depravity, "Stuck" should do the job.

STUCK (R) With Russell Hornsby, Rukiya Bernard. Screenplay by John Strysik. 1:25 (sex, nudity, vulgarity, violence, drug use, debased humanity). At the Angelika Film Center, Mercer and Houston streets, Manhattan.