Breakdown
One of the most inherent and irrational fears of many people (especially Northern liberals) is that of the presumably All American yet still ominously looming in the backwoods Southern redneck, at times an unfair stereotype (since many country type people are actually very nice) but also a fear that is not always necessarily connected to the known Confederate heritage per se but rather the feeling that underneath the friendly yet corny personas and adherement to allegedly pure Christian values that there is a darkness that lurks within all of them, the feeling that their good cheer is just a front for the most depraved and malicious natures imaginable. Hollywood from time to time would exploit such fears in various Gothic productions but the whole thing would kick into high gear with 1974’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre which portrayed your seemingly normal hillbilly family as actually being no holds barred twisted cannibals complete with heavy pagan overtones on top of that. Combining those elements with those of a suspenseful Hitchcock type mystery thriller appeared to be a sure thing and as it were this 1997 release hit the jackpot on that agenda, considered by many to be the best Hitchcock style film of the last 30 years and certainly one of the top rated suspense thrillers of all time, period. It takes a rather standard and often used plot development where the protagonist’s significant other goes missing and must be rescued and / or at least have the main character discover her eventual fate, which recalls another classic thriller this time from the European ranks in The Vanishing (which was later remade in America with Jeff Bridges and Kiefer Sutherland) and which was also an obvious inspiration in this case. The star here is Kurt Russell, undoubtedly one of the most underrated actors ever in both the talent and testosterone departments, here playing a guy eagerly traveling cross country away from his old home base of Boston (a filmed yet deleted scene had explained that he had been a photojournalist in wartorn countries but had become disenchanted with that line of work leading to him heading to the West Coast to start a new life) to San Diego along with his supportive yet sarcastic wife Amy (Kathleen Quinlan) when suddenly while traveling through the American Southwest they run into a bit of trouble: a dilapidated pick up truck pulls out in front of them at the last minute almost causing a major accident and then later at the local gas station, the driver of the truck (M.C. Gainey, a longtime movie badass) chews out and intimidates Russell in front of his wife which actually comes across as believable since Russell with his soft clothes and passive demeanor perfectly resembles a Boston refugee now sticking out like a sore thumb in Redneck Land, a fact made even more apparent by the way he meekly backs down from Gainey, but things become even worse when their vehicle breaks down and the first person to come along offering help is an amicable truck driver (J.T. Walsh, regularly referred to as being the single best character actor who ever lived before dying of a heart attack in the absolute prime of his career with this being his last released movie before his passing) whom through the use of pitch perfect psychology gains their trust and also coerces the wife into hitching a ride with him to a truckstop diner on the pretense of calling for a tow. Off she goes while Russell quickly fixes the problem on his own and drives the vehicle to the predetermined rendezvous only to encounter one big problem: she’s not there and even worse than that, the rednecks who ARE there see this Northern Yankee freaking out over his missing wife and instead of at least being concerned, choose to taunt and heckle him instead. Thus starts the real nightmare of paranoia and disorientation for Russell in an expertly on the edge performance as both he and the viewer start trying to figure out not only where his wife is, but also whom the actual bad guys are as opposed to those who are just your typical hillbilly assholes. Walsh would seem to be a given since the wife took off with him, although his psychological warfare against Russell escalates when Russell confronts him with a cop present and yet Walsh with a straight face audaciously claims to the cop that he’s never met Russell before in his life. Once the exact details of who the real villains are is sorted out (and in this environment every country bumpkin is a possible suspect), Russell is then given an ultimatum which naturally is to pay a ransom which he cannot possibly afford in order to be reunited with his wife (whom it is also implied was either heavily raped or at least stripped naked by the gang upon her abduction) with absolutely no proof or reassurances whatsoever that his wife is even still alive at that point, not to mention it’s pretty obvious that once these bad men get what they want that they are just fixing to kill Russell anyway so in the end it takes some minor mistakes by the villains and a whole hell of a lot of good luck (one of the main overall weaknesses here is literally in just how many purely lucky breaks that Russell catches in the last 30 minutes alone) for Russell to overcome these guys, no mean feat since Walsh’s trucker mastermind is clearly a genius level sociopath (who uses at least two different names complete with separate permits and licenses) specializing in the psychological warfare better than few others of his kind and who also has the brilliant strategic mentality necessary to have pulled off crimes like this on many other occasions in the past as well, knowing just how to talk to Russell in order to get him to do his bidding despite not showing him a shred of the aforementioned proof that his wife is even still alive. In fact, writer / director Jonathan Mostow even stated that the story was inspired by that of countless adults who seem to go missing in this country every year only to have their cases slip through the cracks and be completely forgotten with little to no media hubbub unlike the recent Gabby Petito case where everybody in the country knew who she was very, very quickly. So taking on the real life phenomenon of unexplained (and uncared about) disappearances in this country as the premise of this story was a potent idea to exploit here (keeping in mind that many times in these cases people suddenly vanish into thin air simply because they WANT to, a factor that is brought up to Russell more than once when he is queried about whether he and his wife were having problems prior to what happened) as Russell finds himself insisting to others that his wife wouldn’t have just left him like that as certain types like the diner rednecks find much reason from that to laugh at and guffaw towards his earnestness over THAT issue even as Walsh executes a precise plan to bring Russell out to a certain point where he can make it clear that the only thing that he is interested in over all this is his money, even employing literal decoys to steer him in the right direction. Walsh’s cold as ice performance here seems to be the thing that everybody remembers from this film and it’s a justified asset while Russell himself is eventually forced to take on the role of reluctant action hero in order to get the job done, having not only to take on Walsh but also Gainey and several other accomplices who at times only emerge from the woodwork as needed. When the viewers truly start to emphasize with Russell’s plight, the suspense factor can manage to get unpleasant and even stressful with our own main character feeling that he has no one to turn to and nobody whom he can even trust until someone such as Gainey shows up and points a shotgun in his face. Gainey (no stranger to playing unpleasant roles) would later admit that he actually REGRETTED taking on this part since he felt that it was by far the darkest character he had ever played, but maybe that was the whole point of everything when you are portraying being part of this small cadre of truckers who know the roads so well that kidnapping and murdering yuppies for their life savings is just another fun pastime that if done right, can yield major returns for years without anyone in law enforcement ever catching on to their patterns or activities, working different regions in the process whenever they see certain types who just happen to be passing on through and this effort certainly pushes that paranoid idea to its absolute zenith, capped off by a great lead villain and Russell excelling as a regular guy at the end of his rope…
8/10