This low budget but high action flick proves the acting chops of both Kurt Russell and J.T. Walsh and provides a riveting ninety minutes.

Jeff and Amy Taylor (Russell and Kathleen Quinlan) have sold up and are heading for a new life in San Diego, spending far too much on their new Jeep and bemoaning their lack of finances. While distracted at the wheel, Jeff almost hits a car driven by hillbilly Lemmy-a-like Earl (M.C. Gainey). A slight altercation with Earl while filling up his oil at a gas station puts Jeff on edge, but when the car breaks down in the middle of the Nevada desert, he gets more worried. A passing trucker, Red Barr (Walsh, in one of his last roles before his untimely death), stops to help and offers to take them to a café to call for help (Jeff’s primitive boxy mobile obviously has no signal). Jeff decides to stay with the car while Amy goes with Red. When Jeff tries to find Amy, though, she’s nowhere to be seen and Red denies any knowledge of her.

Breakdown uses a very simple setup to provide an exciting mix of Duel and The Vanishing with a hint of Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes. The desert location provides a stunning vista to enhance the feeling of isolation for Jeff and a chance to ramp up the car chases and stunt work. Although the ‘kidnapped spouse’ conceit is a familiar, the location adds to the frustration of Russell’s character and plays into the common ‘fear of the redneck’ cliché wonderfully, and even subverts it by having the ringleader be an otherwise respectable family man.

This is the pinnacle of writer/director Jonathan Mostow’s work (he sadly went on to helm Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines) and Imprint’s Blu-ray release comes packed with informative extras. There’s input from many of the people behind the scenes including Mostow, who reveals how he managed to get the film released without the ten-minute opening scene written by Sam Montgomery that provided some unnecessary backstory for Jeff.