Breakdown (1997)

This week’s movie review is the 1997 thriller, Breakdown starring Kurt Russell.

Russell plays Jeff Taylor who is driving across country with his wife, Amy, played by Kathleen Quinlan (Event Horizon, The Doors and The Hills Have Eyes remake). Their car ends up broken down in the middle of the desert and a passing trucker stops to help. Jeff stays with the car while Amy hitches a ride with the trucker to a diner twenty miles down the road so she can call a tow truck. Jeff finds some lose cables and fixes the car and drives to the diner to meet his wife; she is nowhere to be found and the hillbilly locals say they never saw her.

What follows is an intense search for his wife accompanied by some really good twists and turns in a very basic but moving plot. J.T. Walsh, (‘The Negotiator’) MC Gainey (TV’s Justified and as Swamp Thing in Con Air) and Jack Noseworthy (a fantastic character actor – Google him and I bet you can’t say you haven’t seen him in something) play great supporting roles and really make you believe their characters. You may love them as actors, but you will hate their characters in this movie. As usual, I don’t want to give much away but these guys really make you hate them and that’s what acting is all about.

Everyone knows how much of a badass Kurt Russell can be but in the beginning of this film, he doesn’t come off that way. He plays a “normal” family guy trying to start a new career in a different part of the country. Over the course of time, his desperation and anger take a hold of him and it does him well as a character because you really see how far he will go to get to his wife. All of the characters in this film, including Russell and Quinlan’s give you enough character development to care about them as they go through the mental breakdown (pun intended) involved with a situation such as theirs. There are even times where you sympathize with the villain characters, if only for a brief moment or two.

Although well received by critics, this film came and went under the radar back in 1997 but has found a nice niche on DVD. It works as a great edge-of-your-seat-thriller with enough twists and turns to keep even the most jaded thriller aficionado interested. While watching this film, I kept thinking how easily it could have been made in the late 1970s or 1980s due to its style, simple plot and search and revenge themes. I then realized that the reason it probably didn’t fare well with audiences at the time was due to the new wave of CGI-laden films being released beginning in the early 1990s. If it was released in the late 1980s, this film might have a better chance.

I found myself yelling at the screen a couple of times (proof positive that I am very involved in a film) due to a character’s actions, lack of actions or the always popular good (dumb) idea. The action/thriller elements are intense and there are enough dramatic elements to keep you invested and going. It does a good job of making you think about how far you would go to rescue a loved one, and what you would do in real-life situations and as the film’s tagline suggests: “It Could Happen To You!”

4 Mack Trucks (Out of 5)

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