‘Breakdown’ Finds Formula For Success - Action

“Breakdown” is a movie with a very clear moral: Never, ever, no matter how old you are, accept a ride from an unfamiliar trucker - unless you are armed with a semiautomatic weapon or have a SWAT team ready just in case you disappear.

In this movie, Jeffrey and Amy Taylor (Kurt Russell and Kathleen Quinlan) are on a cross-country trip when their car breaks down. A trucker drives by and is more than willing to help them out. Is he a Good Samaritan committing a “random act of kindness,” or part of an anti-tourist conspiracy?

The answer must be relatively obvious, considering that a movie about a random act of kindness would be only about 15 minutes long and wouldn’t have been able to afford Kurt Russell.

So the trucker is part of an anti-tourist conspiracy. After Jeffrey gets his car working again, he goes to the diner where he is supposed to meet his wife, only to find a group of small-town bearded men who prefer to glare at each other rather than help Jeffrey find his wife.

As Jeffrey leaves the diner, a dumb-looking teenager approaches him and says that his wife has been kidnapped and taken north toward some river. Jeffrey goes after her and is chased by an evil-looking black pickup truck the whole way. Then he drives of cliff and swims to freedom. That is, until he is clubbed by that same dumb-looking kid (who isn’t so dumb after all) and thrown in the trunk of the car.

At this point, I started to wonder, why didn’t Jeffrey and Amy just fly? Shipping their belongings may have gotten a little expensive, but freight charges seem so minimal compared to being kidnapped and blackmailed.

“Breakdown” proves that Kurt Russell basically plays the same character in every movie he appears in. His last two films - “Escape From L.A.” and “Executive Decision” - had very different plots. But by the end of each one, Russell is a lean, mean (along with dirty and bloody) fighting machine.

In this movie, Jeffrey Taylor is supposed to be a boring, everyday guy. The screenwriters obviously overlooked the fact that Kurt Russell was their lead man. For a businessman, Jeffrey seems to have incredible knowledge of concealed weapons and small arms. And without those skills, he would have been done away with quite early in the film.

Then there’s J.T. Walsh as the bad guy. Walsh does such a great job that he probably didn’t need any character development for “Breakdown” (not to say that there was any). Walsh plays the trucker that kidnaps Amy. Whenever he appears in the movie, a strange darkness envelops the screen.

While this movie is a little bit formulaic and outrageous, in retrospect, “Breakdown” is fun to watch. There are action-packed moments worth applauding, and these kind of characters have been in so many movies that you know who to root for before the film even starts.

Grade: B