BREAKDOWN (1998)

Cast

Plot

Kurt Russell is superb in this taut action thriller, as a mild-mannered city guy who finds himself trapped in a redneck nightmare. Stranded on a desert road when their car breaks down en route to San Diego, Jeff and Amy Taylor breathe a sigh of relief when friendly grandpa-type trucker Red (J.T Walsh) turns up to save the day, giving Amy a lift to a nearby diner while Jeff waits with the expensive new motor. But when Amy fails to reappear, and Jeff reaches the diner only to find nobody's seen her, you can feel his panic begin to rise. The nightmare deepens when Jeff spots Red's truck, and the erstwhile good samaritan point blank denies having ever met him before, putting on an ice-cool performance in front of a passing cop, who clearly dismisses the distraught husband as a neurotic yuppie. From then on Jeff's on his own, setting the scene for some awesome action sequences and genuinely nail-biting tension as he single-handedly takes on a community of dangerous dimwits. Excellent.