Breakdown: Critic Reviews

Mostow knows his Hitchcock as well as his Spielberg.

Many will note echoes of 'The Vanishing,' 'Deliverance' and most of all, Steven Spielberg's 'Duel,' with Mostow displaying much of the craft that Spielberg ambushed us with in the 1971 TV movie that put him on the map.

[Kurt Russell's] lack of energy afflicts the film as much as its director's lack of ideas.

Pretty good.

Breakdown gets the job done.

Taut, skillful and surgically effective.

Breakdown has plenty of deft action sequences, and what they add up to is nifty garbage disposal, with all of us -- characters, filmmakers, viewers -- ultimately spiraling down the same drain.

A taut suspense film.

A classic summer movie that has smarts plus sizzle.

A long, drawn-out bore where the fate of each character is all-but-inscribed on his or her forehead.

...one of the most effective and flat-out engrossing thrillers within recent cinematic history...

A first-rate nail-biter that packs more genuine white-knuckle moments into 100 minutes than a dozen overpriced volcano movies could ever dream of having.

A taut, well-crafted suspense film that delivers the paranoid goods.

An engrossing, exciting nailbiter that makes the most of every single one of its efficient 95 minutes.

Are we really supposed to empathize with the empathy-proof Kurt Russell? I was actually hoping that his character's wife had run away with the trucker ...