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Starring Kurt Russell, Kathleen Quinlan.  The tag line for this one was: "it could happen to you", and while this could no more happen to me than I could die fighting in the Civil War, I have to admit it was a pretty good movie.Breakdown is the story of a man who's wife turns up missing after their car breaks down and accepts a ride to a pay phone from a helpful trucker. There's no more to it than that, and that is refreshing. Too many of the recent action movies have three or more things going on in them at the same time; the lead character might be trying to prevent illegal dumping while also trying to reconcile with his wife, communicate the dangers of gang banging with high schoolers, or working out differences with a new partner. Breakdown doesn't touch on any of these; Kurt Russell's wife is missing, and he wants to find her. It focuses all of it's energy and screen time toward this one goal and by doing so draws the viewer in on a much deeper level than usual. You feel Kurt's anguish, you feel his nerves beginning to fray, and you feel his sense of utter helplessness. As an entertaining adventure/suspense film, Breakdown is almost perfect, with few, if any, flaws. The setting in the desert, just outside a small, transient, trucker town, is excellent and the ending nothing short of spectacular. The bad guys in these types of movies are always killed, no audience views fifteen years in jail as an acceptable punishment for kidnapping Kurt Russell's wife, and Breakdown deserves some kind of a special award for creating the most horrendous and viewer friendly way of killing the head bad guy. I've seen a lot, and I mean a lot, of action movies over my years, easily approaching the millions, and this was, bar none, the best way I have ever seen the bad guy get what was coming to him. My mouth hung open and all I could think was, 'God that's got to hurt'. Breakdown does what it sets out to do and breathlessly gives you two hours of stomach in your throat entertainment. This was one enjoyable movie.
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Breakdown, unlike The Saint does not delve deeply into Russell's helplessness, but the ten or so minutes we are given, are done magnificently. We know that Russell isn't crazy for demanding to look at receipts to see if his wife was ever at the diner where they agreed to meet, but everyone else in the diner, and movie, doesn't. This feeling of solitude and loneliness that you feel with Russell gives you a much greater sense of sympathy for his situation. Russell has no one to turn to and no one to trust.