BREAKDOWN
A film review by James Berardinelli
Copyright 1997 James Berardinelli
RATING (0 TO 10): 3.0 Alternative Scale: *1/2 out of ****
United States, 1997 U.S. Release Date: 5/2/97 (wide) Running Length: 1:32 MPAA Classification: R (Violence, profanity) Theatrical Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Cast: Kurt Russell, J.T. Walsh, Kathleen Quinlan, M.C. Gainey, Jack Noseworthy, Rex Linn, Ritch Brinkley Director: Jonathan Mostow Producers: Martha De Laurentiis, Dino De Laurentiis Screenplay: Jonathan Mostow and Sam Montgomery based on the story by Jonathan Mostow Cinematography: Doug Milsome Music: Basil Poledouris U.S. Distributor: Paramount Pictures
BREAKDOWN is the latest in a seemingly endless traffic jam of thrillers that opens strong but finishes abominably. Although the first reel-and-a-half tantalizes with the possibility of a tense, high-octane ride, the film veers off course and runs out of gas all-too-quickly. Actually, if BREAKDOWN had started more weakly, I probably wouldn't be quite as harsh on it, but it's difficult to watch a motion picture you're beginning to enjoy devolve into a stupefying example of "crowd- pleasing" rubbish. (The film makers may have miscalculated here -- the crowd I was with laughed their way through the supposedly-taut climax.)
Kurt Russell, who has blasted his way out of New York and L.A., is now stuck trying to escape from the middle of nowhere. He plays mild- mannered Jeff Taylor, a man who has little in common with Snake Plisskin except the facial features. Jeff and his wife, Amy (Kathleen Quinlan), are on a cross-country trip from Boston to San Diego when their car breaks down on a lonely highway wending its way through the bleak-but- beautiful landscape of the American southwest. (Cinematographer Doug Milsome's glorious scenic shots are easily BREAKDOWN's highlight.) But that's not the worst aspect of the situation -- Jeff and Amy think they're being stalked by another driver (M.C. Gainey), so it's a relief when the friendly operator of an eighteen-wheeler, Red Barr (J.T. Walsh), pulls over and offers to help.
Jeff decides to stay with the car while Amy accompanies Red. The plan is for him to drop her off at the nearest diner where she can call a tow truck. Time passes and Jeff manages to get the car started. He drives to the diner, but Amy isn't there, nor is there any sign that she ever stopped in. Suddenly frantic, Jeff drives off in pursuit of Red, but, when he catches up to him, the trucker claims that not only didn't he pick up a woman, but he doesn't recall having ever met Jeff.
I have just described about the first thirty minutes of the movie, and it doesn't sound bad at all. Take a little Hitchcock, a dash of Steven Spielberg's DUEL, and a pinch of THE VANISHING, and you get a fair approximation of the level at which BREAKDOWN begins. That's a lofty perch to start from, which means that it's a long way down, and, unfortunately, BREAKDOWN plummets the entire distance. The ending has more in common with sloppy, cliched, psycho-killer thrillers like UNLAWFUL ENTRY and BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT (the setting reminded here me of that one) than with anything fashioned by a respectable director.
The three leads -- Kurt Russell, J.T. Walsh, and Kathleen Quinlan - - do the best they can with cardboard, one-dimensional roles, but the script's banality defeats them. Of course, they can't be held entirely blameless for this debacle, since they agreed to appear in it. Given his recent track record, which includes the white-knuckler EXECUTIVE DECISION, I would never have guessed that Russell was so hard up for a job that he'd have to accept something of this sort.
Thrillers don't have to be realistic to work. Take SPEED, for example. There's no way that the bus could have cleared the gap in the road. But we believed it because the movie had painstakingly created an "alternative reality" in which such gravity-defying feats were possible. BREAKDOWN never does that, and, as a result, its increasingly- preposterous turns come across as laughable. Film maker Jonathan Mostow's work behind the camera is a complete bust (this apparently is his second feature, following the memorable BEVERLY HILLS BODYSNATCHERS). His pedestrian direction and unoriginal script diffuse any tension that BREAKDOWN might have generated. The film turns into a long, drawn-out bore where the fate of each character is all-but- inscribed on his or her forehead. If this movie was a car, it would have been hauled off to the junk yard as soon as it started falling apart -- a process that is well underway by the half-way point.
- James Berardinelli e-mail: berardin@bc.cybernex.net ReelViews web site: http://www.cybernex.net/~berardin
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews