by Hadley Hury
reakdown
comes just in time to give us all some
serious second thoughts about summer road-trip plans. Driving through
the expansively lonely, otherworldly beauty of the high Southwestern desert
-- on their way cross-country from Boston to a new home and new jobs in
San Diego -- a married couple, Jeff and Amy Taylor (Kurt Russell and Kathleen
Quinlan), end up in the middle of nowhere when their new deluxe utility
vehicle grinds to a halt. A mechanical malfunction that leaves you stranded
alone in the desert under a broiling sun can be serious business; it is
a measure of Breakdown's powerful assurance as a thriller that we
scarcely have time to register this reasonable, daylight concern before
it proves to be merely the dangling latch on a door that opens, as in a
nightmare, to another door and then, faster and faster, another and another
-- a yawning chasm of constantly escalating paranoia, terror, and unreasoning
evil.
In
his first theatrical release, director Jonathan Mostow (who co-wrote the
script with Sam Montgomery) has melded several strong elements into an elegantly
crafted film with a deceptively simple structure.
The through-line of the story is a tried-and-true formula: Jeff waits with the Jeep while the seemingly kind driver (J.T. Walsh) of an 18-wheeler gives Amy a lift to the nearest roadside diner; Amy does not return; a conspiracy of bad guys begins to emerge in the parched, desolate landscape, at first like an incredible mirage, but eventually as an unrelenting, horrific reality; Jeff must figure out what's going on, save himself, and find Amy.
It is how Breakdown handles its "ordinary man in extraordinary circumstances" -- a favorite premise in Hitchcock's thrillers -- that sustains the film's unsettling psychological suspense. It's why the bad guys are bad, how the arid landscape is hostile, why the mystery defies understanding, and how the protagonist (an average, peaceable guy who wears khakis and a polo shirt) becomes a quick-witted, death-defying hero that give the film its frisson. It has the rush of an expertly told ghost story late at night by a campfire, a breathless, headlong freefall through anxiety without a ledge to grip. Basil Poledouris' music score -- eerie, synthesized staccatos that seem to skitter and echo around the desert rock formations -- reinforces the director's frequent use of deep-focus and sweeping aerial shots which induce in the audience a sense of vertigo to match the hero's panic.
Breakdown's atmospherics provide resonant context for the actors. Without divulging too much about the wonderful J.T. Walsh's role and his band of bad guys, let's just say that his dead-eyed malevolence has never been employed to more chilling effect. His character and his fellow brigands haunt the desert landscape like a miasma of inchoate evil, all the more disturbing because they tap into our escalating societal fear of the gulf between haves and have-nots that produces children who shoot one another over a pair of sneakers, gangster adolescents, domestic terrorism -- burgeoning numbers of people who do harm for very little reason. (The Tates' crime is that they have a new Jeep with leather seats and, though only middle-income folk, are perceived as having money.) These bad guys also share some frightening identity factors with the tunnel-vision paranoia that nurtures the proliferation of extreme right-wing militia groups.
Kurt Russell gives what may be the most compelling performance of his career to date. It's a big role -- Jeff is onscreen for most of the film's two-hour duration -- and Russell carries it very well, giving real emotional urgency to the character's progression from bewilderment to panic and, eventually, fury. He is in proud company here: Like Jimmy Stewart (in Rear Window, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and even, to a degree, in Vertigo) Cary Grant (in North by Northwest), and Henry Fonda (in The Wrong Man) his Jeff Taylor is the sort of Everyman character Hitchcock often utilized in order to ensure audience empathy with the hero's uncomprehending predicament -- and Russell has the goods. Separated from his wife, he has the abject lostness of a little boy; forced into survival tactics, he has a ferocity that surprises even himself. The role dually functions as the psychological catalyst for the film's edgy suspense and as the emotional catalyst for the audience's pity, terror, and rage -- and the range and potency of Russell's performance keep it all on the boil.
AUSTIN POWERS: INTERNATIONAL Man of Mystery is a grossly overextended comic sketch featuring Mike Myers playing two roles which together do not add up to even one good reason to sit through this 90-minute parody.
Myers plays Powers, a nerdy James Bond superspy, who was swinging his way through the groovy London '60s until he was cryogenically frozen to await the return of his similarly suspended nemesis, Dr. Evil (also Myers). They are defrosted in 1997 and Austin gets lines like: "Well, luv, so long as people are still having unprotected sex several times daily with numbers of anonymous partners and ingesting great quantities of mind-altering drugs on a regular basis -- well, I'm sound as the pound."
The female lead is played by Elizabeth Hurley, who seems as embarrassed coping with the unrelenting barrage of unfunny sexual double entendres as she did a couple of years ago when she had to field media questions about boyfriend Hugh Grant's famous dalliance with an L.A. hooker.
A few good jokes arise from the disparity between Austin's legend-in-his-own-mind status as a suave playboy/ intelligence operative and the brutal reality of seeing Myers prance around in a Mod velvet suit with lace cravat, a bad Beatle-like wig, crooked, black hornrimmed glasses, and a nasty yellow overbite. (At least Austin is his own character; Myers' Dr. Evil looks and sounds like a Mel Brooks outtake.) Occasional references to the '60s strike a funny, satiric chord. But, on the whole, the movie becomes belabored. Nearly every scene plays too long and the characters fall into repetitive situations and dialogue.
My 13-year-old companion and I shared an assessment worthy of Austin himself: "It's just not our bag, baby!"