Breakdown, Go Ahead and Give It To Me

I watched BREAKDOWN tonight. One of my personal favorites, esteemed member of a selection of films I like to think of as B-Plus-Movies: a B-Movie taken to a higher level by quality acting/concept/writing/all of the above. Doesn't aim higher than it should, doesn't pretend to be something it's not. Basically, a B-Movie done really, really well. JOY RIDE's one of the group. So's PITCH BLACK. If you need another example, look at pretty much anything John Carpenter did up until 1995.

Kurt Russell, you'll notice, is the King Of B-Plus Movies.

Anyway, I watched BREAKDOWN this time around mainly to be reminded of the structure of the film and how the story progresses. And, suitably, the story progresses like a Mack truck: starts up, builds momentum, then just plows right on through to the end. The story beats are clean, and each one is hit beautifully.

Here's how the first thirty minutes of BREAKDOWN goes...

Opens with Kurt and the missus in their shiny new Jeep Grand Cherokee on a drive through the desert, pleasant conversation setting up their relationship and situation (both of which feel perfectly genuine, thanks to some excellent dialogue). Kurt almost rams a black pickup truck that pulls in his path and has to do some dust-raising maneuvering around it, which serves the dual purpose of giving the audience a little jolt of what's in store and letting us know that Kurt's not a bad driver. Kurt and missus stop for gas and to let Kurt cool his nerves after the close encounter, but the stop only serves to extend the confrontation with the black pickup and its menacing driver, who pulls up alongside and gives Kurt some shit. A little rattled, but keeping his cool, Kurt and missus get back on the road, with Kurt putting on some speed to distance them from the black pickup as much as possible.

And then: the titular breakdown. Friendly trucker, played by the late, great J.T. Walsh, comes by and gives the missus a lift so she can call for a tow truck, while Kurt, worried that the black pickup will come by and mess with his ride, stays with the Jeep. After a little while and no pickup, Kurt gives the engine a thorough check, sees some plugs unplugged, and gets the thing running again. Drives up the road to the diner where he's supposed to meet the missus. She's not there, no one's seen her. Concerned, he heads for the nearest town, and on the way sees J.T. Walsh. After another adrenaline-pumping vehicular near-miss, he pulls over J.T., who now says he's never seen Kurt before in his life.

[This scene, incidentally, is directed perfectly and played brilliantly by Walsh. There's no sinister smile, no chilling music, no "Hey, that's my wife's shoe/necklace/dismembered finger in your truck!" In other words, no nod from the filmmakers to the audience to let us know that, yes, that is the same trucker, and He's Up To No Good. Walsh, in the scene, is confused but courteous, annoyed but helpful, as any innocent, reasonable person would be if he were suddenly accused of kidnapping. And as a result, we're as confused as Kurt.]

So, Kurt confronts J.T. J.T. comes back with the I-don't-know-you-from-Adam bit. Kurt flags down a cop, who searches the truck, then lets J.T. get on his way and advises Kurt to go into town and fill out a report. Which Kurt does, afterward stopping to stare despondently at the Missing Persons board, every available inch of which is filled with fliers. Then Kurt heads back to the diner to see if his wife has turned up, only to be turned away by the aggravated bartender at gunpoint after Kurt, desperate for evidence that his wife was there, attempts to grab the bartender's stack of receipts. Kurt, now at wit's end and seeing conspiracies everywhere he looks, heads for a phone to call the police again, then stops dead in his tracks when a local halfwit grease monkey says, Yeah, I saw your wife, and I know where she is. And then, confirming Kurt's conspiracy theories, the grease monkey drops the bomb that the police are in on it.

There's the first half-hour, which ends with Kurt running to his Jeep and taking off to the river, where he's been told he'll find his wife. In thirty minutes, we've watched Kurt narrowly avoid two high-speed collisions; be physically threatened twice, once at gunpoint; have his wife kidnapped; confront who he believes to be the kidnapper, only to learn that he may be wrong; have an encounter with the police; and learn of what appears to be a widespread conspiracy.

That's a good thirty minutes. Hell, you get the first near-collision, the introduction of the menacing black pickup, and the breakdown, in the first ten.

The point of all this, if you haven't guessed, is that I'm starting to work on another screenplay, and it's important for me to keep this stuff in mind.