Kurt Russell is amazing as the average american making a journey across the States, travelling through strange and distant places. The ominous feeling of utter suspense and the overwhelming initial paranoia grabbed me from the onset, as Rusell came head to head with a local redneck when he nearly collided with him. The eerie desert setting of Utah coupled with the nice shiny new car which contrasted against the rough country with its rough redneck cafés and gas stops created an atmosphere of deep vulnerability and foreboding. The couple's quiet and ordinary existence contrasted harshly with the atmosphere of the unfriendly people and surroundings. Kurt Russell was a brilliant depiction of the average man in a situation where his wife has accepted a lift with a trucker when his car breaks down, and she does not appear at the truck stop they arranged to meet at. His reaction as the realisation dawned was brilliantly realistic and this drew you into the movie which despite a plot which some say has become too common, the movie was from then on never predictable. Russell's realism and humanity was so lifelike that it made you deeply fearful when he decided to pursue his wife and the kidnappers and made you cheer whenever things went slightly his way. The suspense built up like a thunderstorm with a climactic ending, with some of the most thrilling sequences of car-chases ever filmed. Ruussell as a hero in this picture, is so much more grabbing because the movie paints a picture of what would happen in the real world in a situation like this, and it is actually feasible too, there may have been the odd scene which slipped on this but this movie is so gripping because for the hero, his fix and his choices certainly aren't cut & dry, things don't always go right, as they do for the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Clint Eastwood. For a thriller in the 90's, it doesn't get much better than this!
