BREAKDOWN
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1997 Scott Renshaw
(Paramount) Starring: Kurt Russell, J. T. Walsh, Kathleen Quinlan, M. C. Gainey. Screenplay: Sam Montgomery and Jonathan Mostow. Producers: Martha DeLaurentiis and Dino DeLaurentiis. Director: Jonathan Mostow. MPAA Rating: R (violence, profanity, adult themes) Running Time: 95 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
Jonathan Mostow is a thief. As it turns out, he also happens to be a very talented thief. Hollywood is obsessed with The Idea as the defining element of a film, with the pitch meeting as the defining moment in the creative process. Even critics can fall into the same trap of equating The Idea with the complete film. When a film with a familiar premise appears, you're likely to see dismissive reviews which perpetuate the notion that the real culprit is lack of originality, rather than lack of craft. Of course, by those standards William Shakespeare would be the most reviled plagiarist of all time -- how dare he steal his plots from antiquity, from English history, from other writers?. A great idea works, but it can work more than once. It's the mark of a talented artist when he can take that recognizable idea and make it something original and exciting.
Take BREAKDOWN, for instance. The Idea is straight out of THE VANISHING: Jeff Taylor (Kurt Russell) and his wife Amy (Kathleen Quinlan) are driving from Boston to San Diego when their car breaks down in the middle of the Arizona desert. An amiable truck driver named Red (J. T. Walsh) stops to offer help, and Amy goes with him to call for a tow truck while Jeff stays with the car. Then Jeff notices that a couple of wires under the hood are disconnected, and he drives the now-functioning car to the diner where Amy and Red were supposed to make their call. No one there has seen either Amy or Red, however, and Jeff begins to fear foul play. A search which begins with fear then becomes compounded with confusion and frustration as people turn out not to be what they seem, and as Amy's disappearance begins to look like part of a more sinister conspiracy.
Writer/director Jonathan Mostow doesn't restrict his "borrowing" to THE VANISHING. The malevolent trucker and desert landscapes owe a debt to Steven Spielberg's DUEL, and there is a recognizably Hitchockian quality to Russell's ordinary guy in extraordinary circumstances. All of this might have left me shaking my head, if BREAKDOWN hadn't been so good at leaving me shaking all over. BREAKDOWN is as viscerally effective as any thriller Hollywood has turned out in the last few years, because Mostow understands what works. The hero is a slightly paunchy Everyman, smart and resourceful enough for us to believe he has a chance at survival, and Kurt Russell does a nice job keeping the anger and determination from becoming one-note. The situation is just plausible and unnerving enough to get under your skin, with a creeping sense of paranoia which could affect the audience as much as it affects Jeff. Mostow also has a pair of wonderfully sadistic villains in J. T. Walsh and M. C. Gainey (clearly men who go by their initials have _something_ to hide). Walsh in particular has the chilling ability to make a word into a weapon, and to make a stare as brutal as any of the pistol-whippings which permeate BREAKDOWN.
Over and above all that, Mostow demonstrates a keen sense for how to construct a gripping, efficient thriller. The opening half hour is a subtle rumble of mounting dread, which in turn becomes a roller-coaster series of set pieces, which in turn becomes an all-stops-pulled finale, all in the course of 95 minutes. BREAKDOWN is most definitely intended as a crowd-pleaser, peppered as it is with frequent opportunities for the audience to cheer Jeff turning the tables on his tormenters. It is also a remarkably effective crowd-pleaser, one which doesn't throw common sense or continuity to the wind for the sake of a punch line. By the time BREAKDOWN builds to a climactic four-car chase -- a somewhat excessive conclusion to an otherwise lean thriller -- Mostow has demonstrated a rare talent for grabbing an audience and refusing to let go.
There is another stolen idea in BREAKDOWN which isn't entirely Mostow's doing. Advertising for the film ominously warns "It could happen to you," a nod to thrillers which became pop culture phenomena by appealing to our collective 20th-century conviction that every stranger is a serial killer waiting to happen -- call this one the "Good Samaritan Truck Driver from Hell." Mostow actually goes a bit farther, playing the conflict in BREAKDOWN as class warfare, and it is disappointing to watch such a solid film resort to back-brain prejudices. If you think about BREAKDOWN long enough, you'll probably discover some things which bother you -- why, for instance, Jeff didn't seem at all concerned about his wife riding with a stranger, or why the villains seem to thwart their own plan at the outset. You may even think about the fact that you've seen something like BREAKDOWN before. And it may not matter, because the Idea is only the frame for a vehicle. Jonathan Mostow has given this one an engine with a heck of a kick.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 auto motives: 8.
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