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Roadkill
**1/2
Cinema Releases - April 26, 2002
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 15. 96
minutes. Directed by John Dahl. Written by J.J. Abrams, Clay Tarver. Starring
Paul Walker, Steve Zahn, Leelee Sobieski, Jessica Bowman, Stuart Stone, Ted
Levine.
The original title of "Roadkill"
was "Joy Ride", and while I like both titles, I think that the new one wins
it by a nose. It thuds more, it's more gruesome, and it has an appropriately
trashy and sadistic air about it. This is one of those movies in which a
psychotic madman chases innocent heroes across the highways of America. Doncha
gotta love 'em?
Paul Walker and Steve Zahn play two young guys
driving across country on their way to pick up a female friend from college.
The character played by Zahn is of course a little, um, zany -- and he comes
up with the bright idea of buying a portable CB radio and using it to send
prank messages. One of Zahn's victims is a truck driver with the handle 'Rusty
Nail', who doesn't see the humour in it when the guys put on the voice of
a loose woman and set up a meeting in an isolated motel.
Rusty ends up killing a random person at the motel,
tracking down the details of Walker and Zahn, and, naturally, terrorising
them. "Roadkill" is a collection of dark, harshly lit shots in which Walker
and Zahn panic, sweat, hide, run across cornfields and attempt to crawl out
of their car as it gets chased or crushed by Rusty's truck.
Steven Spielberg's "Duel", in which Dennis Weaver
experiences silent psychological terror while a truck looms in his rear view
mirror, is the standard-bearer for movies with this sort of plot, but that
was drama and this is junk horror. The director is John Dahl, who made "Red
Rock West" and "The Last Seduction", and he loads his picture with style
and makes it a good deal of fun. There are cute little movie references here
and there -- the climax takes place in Medford, Oregon, which was the hometown
of the travelling witness in "Double Indemnity", and Walker's car is a Chevy
from 1971, which was the year "Duel" came out. There are also large exploitation
set pieces, expertly done -- I especially admired the ending, which features
half a dozen simultaneous and very gory traps involving ropes, cops, shotguns,
glass panes and assorted other dangerous things. The American DVD has four
alternate endings, but what the filmmakers could have left out, I have no
idea.
Things are pushed over the top rather successfully.
There is a scene in which a sheriff tells the boys, "I want you out of Wyoming
by sundown!" And of course we get the obligatory moment in which they
need to steal an automobile, and then its owner runs out into the car park
to shout, "Hey, what are you doing, that's my truck!" Zahn has to make
a lot of stupid observations and noises, and his would have been an annoying
role in another actor's hands -- but he's a comic genius, used to playing
doofuses in movies like "Happy, Texas" and "Riding in Cars with Boys", and
he brings a natural spontaneity to the proceedings.
"Roadkill" has one big flaw structural flaw, though,
because halfway through it has to stop and calm down in order to introduce
the character played by Leelee Sobieski. We get forty-five minutes of rage,
twenty minutes of calm, and a thirty-minute attempt to regain the pace. Breaking
momentum is a pretty big mistake for movie that wants to wow us with ruthless
efficiency. Anybody remember "The Hitcher"? Now that was a
shockfest.
COPYRIGHT©
2002 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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