Breakdown (1997)

Redundant and unnecessary.

hyped garbage

As Good As It Gets

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Boston couple Jeff Taylor (Kurt Russell) and his wife Amy (Kathleen Quinlain) are on their way moving to San Diego, they are in the middle of nowhere in Utah until their car breaks down and need help. A friendly looking truck driver named Red Barr (JT Walsh) stops to help and Amy wants to go to a diner to get a tow-truck for help, so she goes with the truck driver to go get help. Then for a long time, Jeff begins to worry as he goes to the diner to find his wife is not there, then finds the same truck driver yet Red has claimed he has never saw him or his wife when he is lying when something is fishy, his wife has been kidnapped by him and a few other fellows as now it's up to Jeff to find his wife and track down the demented trucker and his hooligans.An exciting, well paced and well written action mystery thriller from director Jonathan Mostow who co-wrote the film as it's a thrilling, edge of your seat suspenseful movie. The film co-stars M.C. Gainy from the same year's Con Air as Earl, Jack Noseworthy as Billy and Rex Linn as Sheriff Boyd. The performances in this movie are fantastic and so is the premise of "It can happen to you" in it's tagline. The movie delivers a good script especially intense sequences like Jeff in the car with Earl after pulling out money when it's actually one dollar bills with 20s in front of them disguised as a thousand dollars then him stabbing Earl in the shoulder blade with a letter opener then tying him up with fix-it tape even to his neck to drive his vehicle to interrogate him to ask where his wife is. The climax is quite astonishing as you come to hate Red in this movie as JT Walsh makes an excellent scumbag you wish would die in this movie and you get a very crowdpleasing death of him in this movie which i can't reveal for you have to see the movie for yourself.Highly recommended.

Married couple Amy (Kathleen Quinlan) and Jeff Taylor (Kurt Russell) are driving across the country to move to San Diego. They get into a close call with driver Earl (M.C. Gainey). When their car breaks down, they're happy that trucker Red Barr (J.T. Walsh) stops to help. Amy gets a ride from him to a diner close by. Jeff finds some wires disconnected. He restarts the car and drives to the diner but nobody had seen his wife. He tracks down Red Barr's truck but he claims to have never seen him or his wife. Sheriff Boyd (Rex Linn) passes by but a search of the truck reveals nothing.The movie ramps up the tension at every turn. It is quite unrelenting. There are a couple of scenes that feel too manipulative. There is no real reason to climb around while traveling under the truck although dropping the gun is fully expected. The final section has him catching the family unawares. There is no reason for him to start shooting other than a sense of movie morality. The movie keeps pushing the tension to an ultra-high level and it pushes too hard in a couple of places.

Every time Kurt Russell is in something you can always rely on a solid film. And once again in Breakdown you will not be disappointed. A solid cast with great directing makes this a must see. A great thriller that keeps you second guessing until the end which I love. Russell always puts in the full 100 percent and it shows here again. Why can't actors do what he does like this anymore. Good performances all around make this a tight entertaining watch that you will feel you have not wasted your almost 2 hours. A fast paced thriller that hits the mark at every turn. See this one and you will see how the 90s had great suspenseful films lacking today.

This is from the film noir tradition where hapless schmucks find themselves caught in the gears of nightmare, the abstract weave of roads on a map in the credit sequence might as well be the strings of fate the schmuck is tied to and forced to dance.Suitably abstract at first, a happily modern life, exemplified in the SUV with its fancy leather and electronics, that for some inexplicable reason breaks down on the road and the couple get out to be greeted only by a hostile nothingness. In the western man was master of this world, here witless noir pawn. The suggestion is that everything might have been okay had he not stepped on the gas too hard because he panicked, the anxiety causing the breakdown. But this is soon abandoned for ordinary schemes where the fragility of that modern life is exposed by having it so easily exploited as someone reaching under the hood of a car and snapping two wires that held it together. It is still his suburban nightmare of having lost his wife and not having enough money in that Boston bank account to get her back with because he paid for the fancy car but now we have petty conmen looking for just money and everything clear and simple.So this is one of those films where you can see the wonderful ambiguities of noir being supplanted by a simple traction, another is Lethal Weapon. First the thriller and then action mechanics. By the end it's silly and straightforward, the sole reason not to turn it off being that you might want to see people avoid being run over by a truck or hang from a bridge.