Breakdown (1997)

The very best action packed suspense dramatic thriller I have ever seen. Throughout my life I have seen about twelve thousand movies, so that actually is saying something. I can't believe that I never saw this movie until today. Wish I had seen it in the theatre.

Jeff and Amy Taylor are moving from the east coast to the west coast and have a breakdown some sixty miles outside of the town that progress forgot. A friendly truck driver offers to help and gives Amy a ride to town while Jeff stays behind to watch the SUV. He notices the actual problem with his car's engine, a minor one that he can fix, and gets under way to meet up with his wife. When he gets to the diner where Amy is supposed to be calling for a tow truck, she is not there. Where is Amy? Where is the trucker who helped her? Why are people shooting at Jeff?

BUZZ WORDS THAT I'VE HEARD APPLIED TO OTHER MOVIES, WHICH GENERALLY DISAPPOINT, BUT ARE ACCURATE FOR THIS ONE:

Breakdown is an edge of your seat, adrenaline pumping and heart stopping in your face cinematic thrill ride that will leave you breathless and begging for more pulse pounding, jaw dropping excitement; and then it delivers with a finale that will leave you teetering on the edge of eternity chewing on someone else's fingernails.

If you only have the opportunity to see one action flick in your lifetime, THIS HAS TO BE IT!

Fmovies: It takes a lot for me to designate a thriller as utterly and completely mesmerizing, but such is the case with the 1997 Kurt Russell vehicle Breakdown. I stumbled upon this gem when it was released on VHS some 10+ years ago, and, as I recently browsed the somewhat deflated selection of films available in my "Watch Instantly" Netflix queue, decided to give it another go. Once again diving headlong into this ballet of desert highway carnage was like getting reacquainted with an old friend; consequently, this has caused me to lament the stale-by- comparison state of many recent "road rage thrillers" offered up by Hollywood.

If you've never seen Breakdown, it could be described as a more intelligent version of Joy Ride (or, perhaps, The Hitcher). It's about a married couple named Jeff (Russell) and Amy (Quinlan) who are driving cross country—from Boston to San Diego—to take on more lucrative employment opportunities. Along the way, they almost collide with a local in a pick-up truck on a remote desert highway. When they stop at the next gas station, the fella driving the truck—a black-clad hombre with a handlebar mustache and a cowboy hat—proceeds to chew out Jeff for his idiotic behavior behind the wheel. The two eventually call a truce, part ways, and go about their lives. It's not long, however, before Jeff's brand new Jeep inexplicably breaks down. As the couple is trying to assess the situation, a man in an 18-wheeler stops, offers assistance, and eventually ends up suggesting the pair ride with him to the nearest town so they can call a tow truck. Jeff is leery about leaving his car on the side of a highway with a local lunatic on the prowl, so Amy hops in the semi, presumably to wait for her husband at a diner as he figures out what to do. Once she leaves, Jeff discovers the problem, fixes the car, and heads to the diner. When he gets there, though, Amy is nowhere to be found. The locals have no idea who she is, and they all claim to have never seen her. What ensues is a maddeningly wild goose chase across barren southwestern terrain as Jeff does everything in his power to find his spouse.

There are twists and turns aplenty, and the action is great. The most disturbing thing about the film is how genuine it all seems. I have no trouble believing that something like this could (and perhaps has) occur in such remote locales, and there's a real sense of desperation to everything that's unfolding. Russell is great as the panicked husband who knows he's going to have to take things to the extreme to get his wife back, and almost—almost—every one of his decisions seems completely rational. The movie does give way to certain conventions from time to time, and I wish it would've built up the paranoia just a little longer before the "big reveal" occurs (a la Arlington Road), but there's no denying the intensity on display here.

That being said, who's ready for a road trip?

I just saw this movie again for the first time since it was released in '97 and it was just as scary now as ever before. I love the open road and enjoy long drives but after recently watching this movie again I may have to re think my love of the open highway! Yikes!! Kurt Russell is great in this film as the hapless husband who tries to rescue his wife from the group of crazies who are holding her for ransom. But without spoiling the plot, this movie does remind me of one of the other really scary rod trip movie Wolf Creek. Both movie have slightly similar overtones of nutty backwoods (or back roads) people who kidnap innocent passerbys. This movie held me to the edge of my seat due to the suspenseful plot. Check it out but be sure to lock your car doors and check the rear view mirror!

Breakdown fmovies. This is great! The action and intensity never let up for a second. Kurt Russell gives a riveting performance as the hero in search of his missing wife, and JT Walsh is a fine bad guy.

You will keep yourself on the edge of your seat the entire time and will not want to turn it off, even at the end. It's that good. I promise.

If you like intensity and good movies, rent this one. You will not regret it.

*** out of ****

Jonathan Mostow, before he went on to helm the big-budget U-571 and the even bigger budgeted Terminator 3, brought out this taut little thriller and cemented a reputation he's yet to really live up to (though some would disagree about that). His film has that tag-line, but it's not entirely accurate, even though it has a very familiar and eerily recognizable threat at the core: the outsiders coming in to a territory that is very close knit and practically inbred, where one wrong step could cost you and/or your loved ones lives. In this case, Kurt Russell and Kathleen Quinlan are the married couple caught in the cross-hairs of kidnapping, blackmail, and ultimately vengeance. They're moving from Massachusets to San Diego, and driving on through the desert they get side-swiped by a car, then later on after a near-altercation at a pit-stop, they move on only for the couple's car to breakdown. Help comes in the form of a trucker, who offers help for to drive the wife to get a tow-truck. No need for the truck, anyway, because the car didn't have much wrong with it...but what about the wife, Amy?

From there on in, Mostow takes Breakdown into the realm of paranoid thriller, then into just full-on chase/action/revenge/chase again picture. One might wonder if there could be a more noirish quality to it if the wife actually left for a reason other than abduction, though the path that Mostow takes the story is fine as it is. He keeps things simple in the story sense, with elements of the Western thrown in, but also makes it very much character-based as well. Russell's performance as Jeff Taylor is kind of the opposite of his recent turn as Stuntman Mike in Grindhouse: starting off as the average-Joe who tries to be polite, albeit from a yuppie background, he gets put to the test by the enormity of the situation, and finally becomes a real take-no-prisoners hero. Towards the very end it almost reaches the point of being TOO much of hitting over the head with payback, and there are little things regarding the nature of Red Barr (JT Walsh, great villainous presence in a real sinister, calm way) and his ties to the town as to whether or not things are really as controlling as they might be (i.e. the bank scene, which is perfectly acted, though not entirely feasible in the paranoid sense).

But all this aside, what Breakdown remains ten years after is a competent, un-pretentious thrill-ride where the dialog is never too heavy, the action is packed with real stunts and few special effects, and some of the brighter moments for Russell in recent years (or rather, the last ten). It knows what it is, and has the professional temerity of a cult effort.

I spent this Christmas 2004 in Hungary, and watched Breakdown on TV the other night. Yes it was dubbed into Hungarian, but I'd already seen the film in the cinema a few years ago. And you know what? I was still as thrilled watching it in Hungarian as when I saw it in the cinema. Why? Because it tells its story mostly in visuals, this for me is the real power of a good film, using the images to tell the tale.

Kurt Russell is outstanding as the bewildered husband seeking his kidnapped wife, and yes while it reminded me of the superb Dutch film The Vanishing (the original 1988 version not the terrible Hollywood remake), and at times Spielberg's Duel, it still has a real freshness about it, with some great photography and direction.

Well worth a look, possibly Russell's best performance. 9/10