'Breakdown'

Poor Jeff (Kurt Russell): His Jeep’s broken down on a cross-country journey and his wife, Amy (Kathleen Quinlan), has gone missing in the same wide open Southwest where C. Thomas Howell encountered "The Hitcher" and where those poor college students made the cut in "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre."

Problem is, no one believes Jeff -- not the indifferent sherriff, not the extremely odd customers at Belle’s Diner (a No Exit-type establishment in the middle of nowhere) and especially not the trucker (perpetually suspicious J.T. Walsh) who offered Amy a ride to Belle’s in his 18-wheeler and now denies ever having seen her.

Before he knows it, Jeff’s adrift among predators who commit highway robbery via kidnap and forcible cash transfers and operate a traveler processing plant under the very nose of trusting wives. All this is basically an excuse for some protracted Jeep, truck and semi-trailer chases through the definitely deserted desert (you’d think the movie was sponsored by Jeep and the Teamsters, and possibly the manufacturers of wide-ranging cellular phones).

Jonathon Mostow, who wrote the script and then directed the movie, travels mostly familiar backroads and crosses bridges when he comes to them, actually managing a pretty good cliff-hanging denouement on the latter.

Contains violence and profanity.