By Phil Curtolo
Imagine that you're driving along unfamiliar mid-western roads, desert on both sides of you. Your faithful and loving wife rests near you in the passenger seat.
Imagine, now, that your car breaks down. A friendly trucker is happy to lend a helping hand. Your wife takes a ride with the polite and innocent fellow to a nearby diner, leaving you to wait, unaware of the world, in the car. Finally, imagine that your wife never returns.
This is the horrifying situation that average, everyday guy Jeff Taylor (Kurt Russell) faces in the epic suspense masterpiece Breakdown.
Taylor takes a closer look at his car after waiting for his wife, Amy (Kathleen Quinlan), to return for about a half hour and finds a disconnected cable. He reconnects the cable and the car is mobile again.
He drives to the diner where his wife was supposed to have been taken. Amy is nowhere to be found, neither is the trucker who gave her the ride. The chef at the counter knows nothing. Taylor is baffled and we can feel his frustration. He leaves a message with the cook to tell his wife to stay at the diner if she happens to show up, and he speeds off in the direction of the next town.
His course is altered, however, when he spots the truck his wife had hopped in driving along on a side road. Taylor follows behind and catches up. He signals for the man to pull over, and the trucker ignores him. Taylor pulls in front of the trucker, forcing him to pull his vehicle to the side of the road. When confronted, the trucker (J.T. Walsh) disputes that he's never seen Taylor or his wife. What's going on? That's the question that drives Taylor through a convoluted maze of terror.
Russell is good at getting the audience on his side, so it's easy to understand him. He plays a common, regular guy driven by desperation to find his one true love: his wife. That type of dramatic drive can destroy a film if done incorrectly (Mel Gibson's love for his son didn't help the already flawed Ransom), but in Breakdown, the audience falls for Russell and wants to follow him in his pursuit.
Perhaps what makes Russell's struggle work is the masterful style of the film. Director Jonathan Mostow keeps the pace quick, and cinematographer Doug Milsome keeps the visuals sharp. The film shows us a beautiful landscape with plenty of snakes along the road.
Breakdown is so well done that it plays out like an old Alfred Hitchcock film. The terror isn't Texas Chainsaw Massacre scary, it's real. What happens in Breakdown could happen to any one of us. That's what evokes horror in an audience. There's nothing scarier to me than feeling disoriented and desperate.
Breakdown's physical make up is a reminder of another successfully horrific film, The Hitcher; in which, Rutger Hauer stalked the unsuspecting C. Thomas Howell. Breakdown's break-neck pacing and inclusion of human emotion is comparable to Speed. However, Breakdown doesn't steal from these films, it has its own style and heart. Breakdown is put together with such brilliance that it proves to be superior to all three of the fore-mentioned films.
Kurt Russell is a good choice to play Jeff Taylor. Russell has a down-to-earth quality. Although he's rich and living it up in Hollywood, he seems like a regular guy you might run into at the local mall. That is why he works in the lead. Since this story can happen to any regular Joe, a regular Joe was the right person to cast.
Kathleen Quinlan plays an exceptional part as Russell's missing wife. She's cute, smart, and innocent. She too, is someone you could imagine seeing in your neighborhood.
The villains in this film are impressive as well. J.T. Walsh, who has had dozens of roles as someone's brother, or another guy's uncle, finally gets to show his stuff as the not-so-innocent trucker. He's convincing as a liar, as a murderer, and as a loving father. Those three elements are tough to juggle in one film, but Walsh pulls it off. His crew of criminals are the most unappealing crowd since the hillbillies from Deliverance, and they're almost as scary too.
Breakdown is a wonderful mix of style and heart that will keep you on the edge of your seat from start to finish. It's easily one of the year's ten best, and it should turn a decent profit. I hope, at least for Russell's sake, that it does; his last effort, Escape from LA, breezed through theaters. I wish him good luck on getting back on top. After seeing this masterpiece, no one deserves it more than he does. Grade: A+, ***** out of *****
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