I must say from the outset that I have never been much of a Kurt Russell fan. I've seen some of his films (Silkwood, Backdraft, Unlawful Entry) and while he gave adequate performances, I have never been impressed with his work.
Breakdown, then, is something of a surprise. Russell gives a fine performance, as do most of the cast, one that is not upstaged by the action orchestrated in the second half of the film. To say that he holds the film together would not be completely true, but he does it no harm.
Russell plays Jeff, one half of a married couple travelling with his wife Amy (Kathleen Quinlan) cross country to San Diego to start a new job and a new life. While journeying through the desert their car breaks down and, left helpless and stranded, Jeff waves down a passing truck driver (J.T. Walsh) who offers to take them to a nearby diner to call for a tow truck. Because of a nasty incident earlier with a couple of ruffians, Jeff decides to stay with the car while Amy gets help. That, it seems, is the last time Jeff (or anyone else) sees her.
Breakdown has been compared to several movies: George Sluizer's The Vanishing (the original, hopefully, not his appalling Hollywood remake), Steven Spielberg's Duel and any number of Hitchcock films. As with these, Breakdown does not, for the most part, stray down the conventional path of the American action-thriller. Jeff does not become a gun-toting vigilante on the hunt for his wife, but instead becomes a scared, confused everyman who has no idea what the hell is going on. When we do find out what has happened to Amy, it does come as a slight disappointment, if only because it's too early in the film; I for one could have done with an extra twenty minutes or so of mystery and bewilderment, but this affects the film little.
Russell, as mentioned earlier, is very good in his role, and Kathleen Quinlan is nowhere near as annoying as she was in Apollo 13. J.T. Walsh, as the possibly evil truck driver, is terrific; he is one of the best of the fine batch of character actors Hollywood doesn't seem to know what to do with, but director Jonathan Mostow is on the right track here. The reason he makes such a great villain is that he actually looks like a real person, one anyone would be able to trust, which makes the plot that much more believable.
Breakdown is what Hollywood doesn't make enough of, a great thriller with believable characters and scenes that do, indeed, have viewers on the edge of their seats. One of the most genuinely exciting films I've seen in a long time.
**** out of 5
Nigel Bridgeman (nigelb@powerup.com.au) The Movie Pages - a movie page: http://www.powerup.com.au/~nigelb/movies
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