BREAKDOWN
A film review by Christopher Null
Copyright 1997 Christopher Null
It's Rednecks 1, Yuppies 0! At least it is for most of BREAKDOWN, a film that pits hapless Massachusettsans against wily Arizonans in a battle of automotive might on America's highways. If you've seen THE VANISHING (either one), you've essentially seen BREAKDOWN. In this incarnation, Kurt Russell finds his wife (my nemesis Kathleen Quinlan) abducted by the brilliantly evil J.T. Walsh and gang, and a cruel conspiracy is revealed that is designed to separate the happy couple from the fortunes that -- it turns out -- they don't really have. The film has a few interesting twists (that I won't spoil), but the movie's main flaws are its over-reliance on wild coincidences to advance the plot and a pace that is overwhelmingly slow until the very end. With that said, BREAKDOWN gets a big so-so... but if I were driving, I would've just left Quinlan at the truck stop.
RATING: ***
|------------------------------|
\ ***** Perfection \
\ **** Good, memorable film \
\ *** Average, hits and misses \
\ ** Sub-par on many levels \
\ * Unquestionably awful \
|------------------------------|
-Christopher Null / null@poboxes.com / Writer-Producer -Visit the Movie Emporium at http://www.filmcritic.com -and Null Set Productions at http://www.filmcritic.com/nullset.htm
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