Breakdown
Director: Jonathan Mostow.
Starring: Kurt Russell, J.T.Walsh, Kathleen Quinlan, M.C.Gainey, Jack
Noseworthy, Rex Linn.
This movie actually received quite a number of good reviews.
Reviewers whose opinion I often agree with gave Breakdown the
two thumbs up. It's movies like this that make me start to question
my judgement but I will say, in my defence, that I saw this movie with
five other people, four of whom agreed with me: Breakdown
sucked.
Where to start? It's not the worst movie I've seen and Mr. Kurt
Russell (Jeff Taylor) looks quite attractive as the everyman
character. Right, that's the good points out of the way.
What sort of movie was this meant to be? A thriller? But we find out
exactly what's going on very quickly in Breakdown.
There's very little suspense and even less confusion. An action
movie? There were way too many standing-by-the-side-of-the-road,
eerie-foreboding-music, Mr.-Kurt-Russell-close-ups to sustain the
action. Whatever it was meant to be, Breakdown turned out to
be dull. Towards the end of the 95 minutes (and it's not
even all that long!), I was continually looking at my watch. The only
reason I stayed till the end was because I was with people and
would have had to wait outside. Plus, I'm an optimist. I kept hoping
that the movie would get better, or at least throw in a surprise.
My favourite scene of the movie was the car chase when Jeff and
his wife, Amy (Ms. Kathleen Quinlan), are being pursued by the bad
guys in
three different vehicles. While he drives and brandishes a gun about,
trying to fend them off from all directions, Amy sits in the passenger
seat, screaming! This from a movie that uses Greensperson
and Foreperson in the credits.
The
baddies are bad and the goodies are good. In fact, we are even given
an explanation of why these basically poor but honest folk are
driving such a
nice car. I guess we can't have sympathy for rich people but in my
book, the explanation provided just makes them dumb people.
Breakdown is slow, tedious and lacking in any surprises. The
plot twists are non-existent, tense moments are few and far between
and this stuff has been done better before, most notably in
Duel. Even the American version of The Vanishing
had me more in its grip. I really didn't care about the fate of Jeff
and Amy, or perhaps I knew all too well how it would turn out. Either
way, the most suspenseful moment was waiting for the credits.
Rating: F
© Nikki Lesley 1997