Breakdown (1997)

Plot of Breakdown:  Jeff and Amy Taylor, obviously an upwardly mobile American couple, are driving towards their new home in San Diego when their Jeep Cherokee breaks down in the desert outside phone range. A truck stops and the driver, Red, offers to take Amy to a restaurant a few miles down the road, from where she can phone for assistance. Off goes Amy and Jeff finds the reason for the breakdown, possibly sabotage, and gets going, but when he arrives at the truck stop no-one has seen Amy. The owner seems aggressive even. Thereafter Jeff is tricked into meeting with a group of villains who tell him that if he can withdraw $90,000 from the bank and hand it over, he will get his wife back.  He can only withdraw $5000 but tricks Earl who has picked him up, into believing that he has the $90,000. In a confrontation with the police Earl is killed but Jeff has still not found Amy. In desperation he manages to hide on the roof of Red’s truck which he hopes will lead him to his wife.

Content: There is no sex or nudity, Kathleen Quinlan, as Amy, managing to convey a wholesome attractiveness. Some drinking and smoking. Right from the start we can see that Jeff is out of his depth, having a confrontation with Earl at a filling station. Earl drives a battered Pontiac Firebird Trans Am. Once it becomes apparent that Amy has been kidnapped Jeff is cannoned from one disaster to another, at one point driving his Jeep into a river and being stuck in it as it is washed downstream while Earl shoots at him with a rifle. Later he manages to stab Earl with a paper knife stolen from the bank manager and in a fight with a policeman Earl is shot, but not before he has also shot the policeman. Jeff manages to hide himself on Red’s truck, and at the gang’s hide out manages to rescue Amy, but they still have to escape.

A View: This film is now almost 30 years old so it can’t help creaking a bit, but nevertheless manages to convey the desperate tension which would result if you had had your partner disappear in an alien environment. It did well at the box office but at the time cinema goers might have been slightly disappointed that a version of Snake Plissken does not appear in this outing. Jeff is constantly blind sided by the villains and it is just due to luck that he does well. But if you are thumbing through the on line offerings it is not the worst film you could pick.

Fun Fact: Kurt Russell had just finished Escape from L.A and demanded a daily 12 hour break with him family. This resulted in a twice daily trip by limo, executive jet and helicopter and made transport one of the film’s major costs.