Breakdown (1997)
Directed by Jonathan Mostow
On their cross-country drive, a married couple, Jeff and Amy Taylor, experience car trouble after their SUV breaks down. Stranded in the New Mexico desert, the two catch a break when a passing truck driver offers Amy a ride to a nearby café to call for help. Meanwhile, Jeff is able to fix the car and make his way to the café, but Amy isn't there. He tracks down the trucker ― who tells the police he's never seen Jeff or his wife before. Jeff then begins a desperate, frenzied search for Amy.
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What critics compared Breakdown to
Echoes of thrillers past, including The Vanishing (girlfriend disappears without a trace!), Steven Spielberg's Duel (menacing big rig seen through rearview mirror!), and even the recent The Trigger Effect (technological failure = anarchy!) are everywhere in the air here.
Initially, it seems spliced together from two chilling classics, George Sluizer's "The Vanishing" (the original Belgian version from 1988, not the idiotic American remake) and, years before, Steven Spielberg's made-for-TV "Duel," about a psychopathic but entirely anonymous truck set on erasing a mild-mannered traveling salesman.
As it does in Spielberg's Duel, evil arrives in the guise of a big truck.
"Unknown" sort of reminds of a reverse version of 1997's expert thriller "Breakdown," starring Kurt Russell as a man whose wife disappears without a trace when their car breaks down in the desert and she catches a ride to a nearby gas station with a good-samaritan truck driver.
Initially, it seems spliced together from two chilling classics, George Sluizer's "The Vanishing" (the original Belgian version from 1988, not the idiotic American remake) and, years before, Steven Spielberg's made-for-TV "Duel," about a psychopathic but entirely anonymous truck set on erasing a mild-mannered traveling salesman.
The situation at this point resembles the opening dilemma of "The Vanishing" (1988), a brilliant Dutch-French thriller (accept no substitutes; the 1993 U.S. remake is a pale shadow).
This could be a nice premise for an action thriller movie centered on the hero's search for hid loved one(Jonathan Mostow's "Breakdown"(1997) is a good example), but Sluizer's screenplay, based on his co-writer Tom Krabbѐ's novella "The Golden Egg", takes a more interesting route.
But he also made the superior thrillers Breakdown and U-571 a decade or so ago, so perhaps he (or a surrogate?) is returning to form.
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As in Jonathan Mostow's intriguing Breakdown from 1997, The Blair Witch Project savvily exposes prejudice as another form of fear.
Considering all the sequels, I thought director Jonathan Mostow ( Breakdown , U-571 ), and a cast headed by Claire Danes, packed the most entertainment value into Terminator 3 .
"U-571" was directed by action specialist Jonathan Mostow, whose 1997 thriller "Breakdown" was one of the most exciting directorial debuts in recent memory.
(My favorite is when the Americans first try to operate U-571 and realize that all the controls will have to be translated from German...in about 30 seconds!) Credit the likable, character-actor-driven cast (especially a revitalized McConaughey) and credit Mostow's own skill at keeping action sequences crisp and comprehensible (a gift previously on display in his underrated Breakdown).
Mr. Mostow, who also wrote and directed the far superior Kurt Russell thriller "Breakdown", has clearly done his homework.
Just like he did in 1997's little-seen "Breakdown", he once again shows a remarkable flair for action-packed intensity that never lets up.
Director and co-writer Jonathan Mostow ("Breakdown") knows how to wind things tight and, just as important, how and when to make them pop.
This shouldn't be surprising for anyone who saw "Breakdown,"…