Breakdown (1997 film)

Breakdown
Promotional poster for Breakdown
Directed by	Jonathan Mostow
Written by	Jonathan Mostow (story & screenplay) Sam Montgomery (screenplay)
Produced by	Dino De Laurentiis Martha DeLaurentis
Starring	Kurt Russell J. T. Walsh Kathleen Quinlan M. C. Gainey
Cinematography	Douglas Milsome
Edited by	Derek Brechin Kevin Stitt
Music by	Basil Poledouris
Production company	PolyGram Filmed Entertainment
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures Gramercy Pictures (North America) Buena Vista Pictures Distribution (Some markets)
Release date	May 2, 1997
Running time	95 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$36,000,000 (estimated)
Box office	$50,129,186 (USA)

Breakdown is a 1997 American thriller film, written and directed by Jonathan Mostow. The film stars Kurt Russell, J. T. Walsh and Kathleen Quinlan. The original music score was composed by Basil Poledouris. The film was produced by PolyGram Filmed Entertainment and released on May 2, 1997 by Paramount Pictures and Gramercy Pictures.

Plot

While driving cross-country from Boston to San Diego in their new 1996 Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo, Jeff Taylor (Kurt Russell) and his wife Amy (Kathleen Quinlan) narrowly miss colliding with a beat-up pickup truck that darts in front of them from an intersecting road on a deserted highway. Later, while stopped at a gas station, the truck's driver, Earl, exchanges hostile words with Jeff before the couple resume their journey. Shortly afterwards, their Jeep breaks down in the middle of the desert. Leaving Jeff with the car, Amy accepts a ride from a passing big-rig trucker named Red Barr (J.T. Walsh) to get to a nearby diner and call for help. Jeff eventually discovers that the Jeep's battery connections have been suspiciously tampered with, and, after reconnecting them, drives to the diner, only to find no one there has seen his wife. When he catches up with Barr on the road and forces him to stop, the trucker claims he has never seen Jeff or his wife before. Jeff hails a passing sheriff, named Boyd, but a search of Barr's truck yields nothing, and he is let go.

Jeff goes to a police station where he is advised by a deputy to go back to the diner and wait for his wife. There Jeff meets a simpleton mechanic named Billy, who says he saw Amy arrive in one truck and leave in another. He tells Jeff where they have taken her, but refuses to speak with the police, suggesting that they are involved. Jeff heads to the location Billy mentioned, but is ambushed on a back road by Earl, and escapes by driving his Jeep into a river. Abandoning the Jeep and later circling back to watch his attackers salvaging the Jeep from the water, Jeff is discovered and knocked out by Billy, an accomplice who had feigned mental impairment.

Jeff awakens in a car trunk surrounded by Earl, Billy, another accomplice, a tow-truck driver named Al, and their leader, Red Barr. Red tells Jeff his wife will be released in exchange for $90,000 that the kidnappers think Jeff has in his bank account. Knowing he only has a small fraction of that amount, Jeff enters a nearby bank to withdraw the little money he has. After a failed attempt to alert the bank manager to his danger, Jeff steals marked money ribbons and a letter opener from the manager's desk; Jeff uses money ribbons to packet $1 bills in-between two $100 bills, fooling the kidnappers. With the ransom in hand, Jeff is then instructed by phone to leave town, where he is picked up and bound with duct tape by Earl in his pickup truck.

While gloating about how easy Jeff and his wife were to abduct by rigging their car to break down after leaving the gas station, as well as bragging that he intends to kill Jeff and his wife anyway, Earl discovers Jeff's ruse with the ransom. At the exact same moment, Jeff frees himself and stabs Earl with the letter opener. After a struggle in the speeding, swerving pickup, Jeff takes over the vehicle, binds Earl, and forces him to reveal his rendezvous with Red at a local truck stop. Sheriff Boyd appears in his patrol car and, seeing the swerving pickup, calls for backup and stops the vehicle. After Jeff exits the truck with Earl's pistol in hand, a stressed Boyd misreads the situation and forces Jeff at gunpoint down onto the road. Earl frees himself and shoots Boyd with a pistol hidden in his boot. Just as Earl is about to shoot Jeff, the wounded Boyd shoots and kills Earl. Jeff uses Boyd's radio to call for an ambulance and heads to the truck stop Earl mentioned.

At the rest stop, Jeff avoids the police looking for him in connection with the shooting of Boyd, and then spots Red talking on a payphone with another accomplice. Jeff follows Red to his truck where he jumps under the moving truck as Red drives away. Jeff loses his firearm while climbing aboard, but stows away to Red's farm which he arrives early the next morning. Hiding in a barn, Jeff watches as Red and his remaining accomplices take a bound and gagged Amy and lock her in a freezer in the barn's cellar, leaving her to die. Unable to open the locked cellar door, Jeff finds a gun in Red's truck and uses it to hold Red's accomplices and his wife and son at gunpoint, demands the cellar key. Billy escapes, but Jeff forces the remaining group to safely release Amy from the freezer before locking them in the cellar. Jeff and Amy flee in a stolen truck, while Billy frees Red and Al. They pursue the Taylors in their respective vehicles.

During the climactic chase, Billy is killed in a fiery crash when Jeff forces his car off the road, while the trailer from Red's big rig detaches, causing Al to violently crash into it. Undeterred, Red attempts to ram Jeff's vehicle off a bridge, trapping Amy's leg underneath the dashboard. Red's big rig nearly falls off the edge and becomes suspend by a steel bridge support. Jeff battles Red on the suspended big rig, eventually hurling Red to the rocks below. Jeff frees Amy from the dashboard in which she (clearly traumatized by her ordeal and implying that she may have been sexually abused by her abductors), pulls the automatic shift on their pickup truck, causing the semi to fall and crush Red. Sitting on the edge of the bridge beside their wrecked pickup truck, Jeff and Amy embrace each other.

Cast

• Kurt Russell as Jeff Taylor
• J. T. Walsh as Warren "Red" Barr
• Kathleen Quinlan as Amy Taylor
• M. C. Gainey as Earl
• Jack Noseworthy as Billy
• Ritch Brinkley as Al
• Moira Harris as Arleen Barr
• Rex Linn as Sheriff Boyd
• Kim Robillard as Deputy Len Carver
• Jack McGee as Belle's Bartender
• Steven Waddington as Cowboy in Bank
• Thomas Kopache as Calhoun

Production

Breakdown was filmed on location in Sacramento, California, Moab, Utah, and Sedona, Arizona.

Music

The score was written by Basil Poledouris, with contributions from Steve Forman, Judd Miller, Eric Colvin and Richard Marvin.

It was released as a limited edition of 3000 units by LaLaLand Records in June 2011 and as of October 2011 is still available. The release comprises a 3-CD set: the first CD contains the complete score as heard in the film (which contains material from additional composers). The second CD contains an alternate early version of the score by Poledouris that represents a different, more orchestral approach to scoring the film. The third CD contains further alternates that demonstrate the changing nature of the music as scenes were rescored.

Release

Critical reception

The film had mostly positive reviews. The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported that 80% of critics gave the film positive reviews based upon a sample of 47, with an average score of 7 out of 10. At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film received an average score of 73 based on 19 reviews. Peter Stack of the San Francisco Chronicle praised the film, "Breakdown use[s] old-fashioned ingenuity — plus a compelling star, a fast-paced mystery and a deadpan villain — to come up with a sizzler." Roger Ebert gave the film a positive review, calling it "taut, skillful and surgically effective" although he felt the "ending is unworthy of it". Stephen Hunter of The Washington Post criticized Russell for not conveying a desperate husband willing to fight for his missing wife, writing "He does a lot of running around while making desperate faces, but he never projects a sense of deep rage. He never gets dangerous. Thus the movie is shorn of its one primitive gratification: the image of the civilized man who finds the Peruvian commando inside himself and lays waste to louts who have underestimated him."

Box office performance

Breakdown debuted at first place at the box office with $12.3 million. After initially opening to 2,108 theaters, the film later expanded to 2,348 theaters and grossed a total of $50,159,144 in the United States and Canada.

External links

• Breakdown at IMDb
• Breakdown at AllMovie
• Breakdown at Rotten Tomatoes
• Breakdown at Metacritic
• Breakdown at Box Office Mojo