For some reason, I've always had a soft spot for what I like to call "Badland Road Movies"—that is, films often set on desolate highways in the Dakotas, wherein an everyman character has to mine unknown resources of mettle and ingenuity to outwork the machinations of fate. In many ways, I think they've become the new noir archetype for our modern world, which I would sketch as follows: Isolated without our toys and buffers (the police are unhelpful and incompetent), other people become tyrannically omnipresent—we are forced to engage with them at eye level, and only in so relating can we reclaim what's ours. It's the ultimate terror for the neighbor-fearing, gun-toting, socially retarded American male of this techno-centric millennium, this portentous saga of a Boston transient (Kurt Russell) who has to outwit primitive locals to rescue his kidnapped wife being an ideal example.
(*Spoilers* follow.)
Although there's nothing thematically or formally on display here to distinguish it from, say, The Hitcher or Red Rock West, Breakdown has a white-knuckle third act that completes Russell's metamorphosis from vaguely supercilious yuppie to avenging civilian, and features a heart-stopping duel with J.T. Walsh's trucker that is pretty incredible. Uncharacteristically, the heretofore-objectified wife (Kathleen Quinlan) helps out, making this a more feminist-friendly thriller than much of Hollywood's ragtag assemblage of summer blockbusters.
(*Spoilers* follow.)
Although there's nothing thematically or formally on display here to distinguish it from, say, The Hitcher or Red Rock West, Breakdown has a white-knuckle third act that completes Russell's metamorphosis from vaguely supercilious yuppie to avenging civilian, and features a heart-stopping duel with J.T. Walsh's trucker that is pretty incredible. Uncharacteristically, the heretofore-objectified wife (Kathleen Quinlan) helps out, making this a more feminist-friendly thriller than much of Hollywood's ragtag assemblage of summer blockbusters.