Starring Adrien Brody. Rated PG.

Shot in an economical 18 days on Vancouver Island, Wrecked stays focused on Adrien Brody as an unnamed man who comes to consciousness in a seriously totalled car near the bottom of a leafy ravine. He doesn’t remember who he is or how he got into this predicament—which includes being pinned in his seat with a broken leg—let alone who that dead guy is in the back. And, as in the stripped-down Essential Killing, the glossy Unknown, and the whatever-that-is 127 Hours, this brief tale is mostly interested in what one man will do to survive.

The movie is a first feature for Montreal-born Michael Greenspan, who must have seen it as a puzzle to unlock with limited tools. Screenwriter Christopher Dodd has called his story a metaphor for low-budget filmmaking, and it does convey that uphill battle, right down to the long stretches of boredom.

What keeps things moving, literally, is the almost superhuman determination of Brody—also one of the producers here—to both get out of the car and to wake up the audience at regular intervals. Along the way, the battered dude also fights hunger, freezing rain, a barking dog, a hungry cougar, and Tiny Tim on the radio. He also has increasingly violent hallucinations, including those of a frazzled woman (Caroline Dhavernas) and some armed men looking for money who can’t possibly be there. Or can they?

In the end, there’s a pretty good twist, although that’s not more impressive than the fact that Wrecked manages to pack three actors named Adrien (or Adrian) into a story with hardly any humans.