Transcript

Intro Clip

You're a tough man to get a hold of, Jeffrey. What do you want? Huh. It's not what I want. It's what you want. How bad you want it, 'cause it is gonna cost you. Can't show it to you right now, but it's about 5'5, 115 pounds, 3 or 4 of that just pure tit. Nice curly brown hair upstairs and down. Interested? Why? Just why? Why us? Bring him up here. Town of Brackett, Jeff. It's a two-bit shithole in the middle of nowhere. See the bank down there? A few minutes, you're going to walk in, tell the manager you want an express wire in the amount of $90,000 from your bank account in Boston. Cash. How do I know she's still alive? Shut up! Come on, Jeff. I need you to pay attention.

Steve

It's 2 Dads 1 Movie. It's the podcast where 2 middle-aged dads sit around and shoot the shit about the movies of the '80s and '90s. Here are your hosts, Steve Paulo and Nic Briana. Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of 2 Dads 1 Movie. I'm Steve.

Nic

And I'm Nic.

Steve

And today we are talking about the 1997 suspense thriller kind of action movie Breakdown starring Kurt Russell. And Nic, you brought Breakdown to the table, so why don't you tell us a little bit about your history with it?

Nic

Yeah, you know, like I said when I previewed it in the last episode, this was actually a suggestion from one of our listeners, Matt DeLuna. Shout out to Matt, and shout out to everyone who listens and writes us. We love hearing from you. We get back to everyone. We love chatting movies. So, you know, hit up the show, theshow@2dads1movie.com.

Steve

That's the number 2 and the number 1.

Nic

The number 2 and the number 1. So yeah, but this was definitely in my mental queue that this was coming up at some point. I think that we especially, we love Kurt Russell. We're big Kurt Russell fans. And he's one of those guys, it's like, he's probably not, he's not on paper the best actor that's ever lived, but I enjoy such a high percentage of his movies. And I love, like, yeah, I just love what he brings to the table.

Steve

He's very Keanu Reeves. You're never gonna like win an Oscar per se, but he's so good at what he does and he's so believable and likable on screen that I don't care. I wanna watch anything Keanu's in. I wanna watch anything Kurt Russell's in.

Nic

Yeah, for sure. And this was one when I worked at the movie theater at Blackhawk Movies 7 in Danville, California.

Steve

Shout out.

Nic

Rest in peace to that theater. We had this movie there, and I remember, you know, stepping in on it a bunch when I was working and watching it a couple times with my free tickets and all that stuff. And then I owned it on video after that, so I watched this a whole lot.

Steve

Nice.

Nic

And this was definitely quotable. Like, some of our buddies, we'd watch it. Todd Toffoli worked at the movie theater with me. We definitely quote this one a lot. And just a lot of fun. Like, I Just these thrillers have been great. Yeah, it's not normally my— the stuff that I watch all the time, and it's been really fun to chat about these. So how about you, Steve? You ever seen Breakdown before?

Steve

Not only have I never seen Breakdown before watching it, I think literally yesterday, I'd never heard of it. It just was not one that I was familiar with at all. I mean, obviously Kurt Russell's had so many films he's made over the years. Yeah, you know, for every The Thing and Big Trouble in Little China and Overboard and Escape from New York that I love, he's done like 5 movies I've never even heard of. I feel like, you know, there's just so many out there. So I wasn't aware of it. I came in as blind as I could. Like I said, I had knew just the very, very, very basics about, again, the movie's called Breakdown. It's about a car breaking down and then guy's wife goes missing and boom. Like, that's basically it. Like, that's like all I knew. And then, and he'd have to hunt, hunt for her. Right. So I knew nothing else. Um, and, and, you know, was like really excited to kind of get into it. 'Cause yeah, you, like I said, we were talking about the other day and, uh, you have brought several thrillers, I think especially from the '90s in particular.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

To the podcast that I'd never seen before. Some of them I'd never heard of before. Some I'd heard of and just not seen. But, you know, The River Wild, Cape Fear, and Sleeping with the Enemy, those 3 in particular, like, I loved those 3 movies and had not seen them before you brought them to the podcast. So I was really excited. It's like, oh, Nic's bringing another '90s thriller. Let's see how it goes.

Nic

Let's hope it's not a Pacific Heights.

Steve

Yeah, Pacific Heights did not. Although now I'm like, damn, do I have to go back and watch that again to like rejudge it? And then I keep thinking about Matthew Modine's stupid face and I go, no, I don't have to fucking go rewatch that. Screw Pacific Heights. Anyway, yeah. So not a super— not aware really of kind of what I was getting into. I just was kind of like, man, let's just go into it, you know, essentially as blind as possible.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

And see what happens. So very excited. Very happy that you, that you brought it to me and to the podcast and, you know, let's just dive into the facts.

Nic

Let's do it, man.

Steve

So the film Breakdown was released on May 2nd, 1997, junior year. Apparently you were working there. Yeah. Yeah. With a running time of 93 minutes. And I want to say this was one of the first things that really excited me when I noticed the running time. I went, oh, That is tight.

Nic

I love a 90-minute movie. I mean, that is— This podcast has made me love a 90-minute movie so much.

Steve

It is okay to have, you know, Goodfellas and some of the ones we've done that are longer every once in a while, but they gotta earn it.

Nic

Right.

Steve

And there is, I have so much more, you know, anything that's 95 minutes or less, I just have more patience for. Like, I'm just more, you know what I mean? It's like, it can be a little less exciting and I'm kind of like, yeah, but it was only 92 minutes, whatever. So 93-minute running time, very cool. The film was directed by Jonathan Mostow, written by Mostow and Sam Montgomery. It stars Chris Pratt, Kurt Russell, J.T. Walsh, and Kathleen Quinlan. Scores, Rotten Tomatoes, 83%, very respectable Rotten Tomatoes score. Quite a bit lower IMDb kind of version, which is a 7.0, which is right at that line we've talked about of being fine, decent, but not celebrated. We get a thumbs up from Roger Ebert. Gene Siskel, this was a time of— he was fighting cancer. He wasn't really on the show a lot, did not review this one. So we get neither an up nor down from Siskel. We do get a thumbs up from Roger Ebert. A handful of awards action on this. 2 nominations at the 1998 Saturn Awards. It was nominated but did not win for Best Action Adventure Thriller Film, which is a category at the Saturn Awards. And then J.T. Walsh was nominated for but did not win Best Supporting Actor that year. However, at the 1998 Blockbuster Entertainment Awards, Kathleen Quinlan did win Favorite Supporting Actress in the Suspense genre. I don't know how many different genres the Blockbuster Awards covered, but they had Best Supporting Actor Suspense or Best Supporting Actress Suspense.

Nic

Interesting.

Steve

And Quinlan won for that, which is a little interesting. She's kind of the least involved in this. Although she does— I mean, we should— I mean, we're not gonna give away the ending, but she certainly has—.

Nic

When she has to act in it, she really has to act.

Steve

And she really does bring the right kind of, uh, you know, terror to certain parts of this. So she did a great job. But yeah, she actually won the Blockbuster Award that year for Best Supporting Actress in a Suspense Film on a $36 million budget, at least a portion of which went to flying Kurt Russell to and from LA and where they were filming in Arizona, uh, basically daily on private jets so that he could continue filming Escape from Los Angeles.

Nic

Okay.

Steve

With John Carpenter around the same time. It only pulled in $50.1 million at the box office, 1.4 times what it cost. A definite disappointment. This was not a box office success really by any measure, which is maybe one of the reasons that I had never heard of it. It just kind of was a movie that flew under the radar for a lot of people.

Nic

Yeah. And I think this was right around when— was this Independence Day or Men in Black? One of those things came out like right around this time, a little bit after, and was huge. Like there was this— All these black gigantic movies. So stuff like this would get buried. And a lot of times we'd start off a big movie in a certain theater, like we had different capacity theaters, right? So we started off in theater 1, that's the big dog. And then if it was in a smaller theater by like Friday of that next week, then you knew it was gonna be fucking gone soon. The Crow 2: City of Angels, biggest culprit of all time that went from the biggest capacity theater to the next day, the smallest one, 'cause nobody was coming to see it.

Steve

Which, you know, just real quick on that, it's like, why did they make a sequel to The Crow after Brandon Lee fucking dies Filming the first one, that should have been the end of it. Yeah, you just end it.

Nic

I think it's bad luck or just dip the chip once and end it.

Steve

Be over with it. Don't go back double dip. Okay. Okay. Well, let's let's kick off. How does breakdown start, man? What's going on?

Nic

So our title sequence is this like you know intense kind of drum music.

Steve

So nineties, right?

Nic

Dude, so so nineties. I just wrote down drums and roads because it's just like you know maps and drums and. And this is a very serious movie. There's very little levity throughout this movie.

Steve

Oh yeah.

Nic

Um, and, and this is the tone for it, right? So there's no animated, uh, Kurt Russell and his wife driving across country, bouncing along on the dirt road.

Steve

Like, no, nothing like that. No, it's a very— it's a very— not— this is not— this is gonna sound like an insult. It's not. It's a very one-note film.

Nic

Yes.

Steve

The film is here to ratchet tension, right? And then eventually try to pay that off. But like, ratchet, ratchet, ratchet is basically all it does the entire time. For sure. Yeah.

Nic

Uh, so now we get our, our main characters, and I don't even Write their names down. Kurt Russell and Kurt Russell's wife.

Steve

Jeff and Amy. Jeff and Amy Taylor.

Nic

Jeff and Amy Taylor. And they're driving through like just this, you know, it's a main road, but just that desolate desert driving through Arizona, you know, when you're going through the middle of nowhere, just hoping that your car doesn't overheat, you don't run out of gas, you don't get a flat tire, any of that stuff.

Steve

You're driving from LA to Vegas, you have to go through tons of stretches just like that.

Nic

Yeah, totally, a lot of that stuff.

Steve

Yeah, for sure.

Nic

And they've got a nice, you know, for that time, this was my dream car at the time, the Jeep Grand Cherokee.

Steve

Gorgeous.

Nic

In the late '90s. And he's got a Boston Red Sox license plate frame. They're established as assholes who maybe have a little money or maybe are living a bit beyond their means with that Jeep. So they're driving through the desert kind of chitchatting a little bit.

Steve

So I'm gonna just dial it back slightly just to get to the credits because again, I went in with as little understanding of what this movie was as possible. The only person I knew who was in it was Kurt Russell. So when the next 2 names that— well, actually, maybe Kathleen Quinlan was between them, but no, I think the next 2 names in the credits were J.T. Walsh and M.C. Gainey, and I went, oh yes, J.T. Walsh and M.C. Gainey! I love both these guys.

Nic

2 of our best initial actors of all time, right?

Steve

Absolutely. I mean, not outside of the John C's, right? We got a couple of great John C's.

Nic

But initial names, right?

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

Who else we got? We got B.J. Novak.

Steve

Yeah, he's great.

Nic

We got CCH Pounder, who has an extra one. She's fantastic.

Steve

She's wonderful.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

But yeah, I mean, really, M.C. Gainey and J.T. Walsh.

Nic

Really good.

Steve

They're wonderful. And so I was really excited to see that. And then seeing that it was produced by Dino De Laurentiis and his wife, Martha De Laurentiis. I always like pointing out 2 things. Dino De Laurentiis, producer on Army of Darkness.

Nic

Okay.

Steve

Film producer for many, many, many, many decades. Wonderful. Also the grandfather of celebrity chef Giada De Laurentiis. If you watch a lot of Food Network, I'm sure you're aware of who Giada is, and it's her grandfather, Dino.

Nic

The most enviable location. That TV show, one of her cooking shows where she's in Italy on this like—.

Steve

On the Amalfi Coast, like yeah.

Nic

Jesus Christ, I would pay like $10,000 for one night at that place. It looks amazing.

Steve

There you go, that's how you know she's succeeded as a celebrity chef, she gets to pick. Like, you know, you're gonna come to me, and it's gonna be here, and this is where I'm filming. It's like, okay, Giada, we'll do that. Anyway, so yeah, so we start off, and basically, yeah, they're chatting for a while, and then they stop at like a gas station. Notice Kurt's rocking the Izod shirt with the little alligator on it. Gotta love that. Very, very '90s dad.

Nic

They're signaling his like yuppiness.

Steve

Exactly.

Nic

Throughout this for sure.

Steve

And so he walks out of the store carrying like a motor oil canister.

Nic

Well, so he had swerved like when they were driving towards the gas station first.

Steve

Oh, that's right.

Nic

He was chatting with his wife and she's like, you know, look, and he swerves. A truck had like pulled out in front of them and he swerves around it, right? And that guy honks and he's pissed off. So they stop at the gas station and then yeah, he comes out here.

Steve

And those dudes are there.

Nic

Those guys are there.

Steve

And there's a few things that kind of like happen here where they chat a little bit and it's MC Gainey and he was driving the truck they almost hit and he's clearly pissed and he's like walking around looking at the car and talking about, oh, you got the leather, you got this, you got the CD. Wow, look at this.

Nic

In a very menacing way.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

Like somebody complimenting your stuff in a way of like, I should fucking take this.

Steve

Yeah, this is, this is, this is diving into the drive-through and ordering the rims and the burger. This is like— but yeah, so, so he's trying to sort of play it off like, hey man, like, you know, I didn't, I didn't almost hit you. You. Like, I think you're being a little— you kind of pulled out in front of me out of nowhere. And he's like, oh, I didn't. It's like, ah, you know, whatever. So there's this little back and forth. So he puts the oil in the— in the back, in the whatever motor, which is like— here's the thing. The problem is they show the dash of the car while they're driving at one point, and there's 245 miles on it.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

Well, they're driving from Massachusetts, so they should be well over 245 miles just to get to Arizona from Massachusetts. And then what car needs more oil after 245 miles? That is Boy, Chrysler should sue them for defamation.

Nic

That's totally like Kurt Russell's character. I would believe that he's just like adding vanity oil to his car so that he looks like he knows what he's doing at a gas station.

Steve

Except even at that point, pouring a whole thing, it would have overflowed everywhere. Anyway, small— like the one— honestly, this movie does not have a lot of plot holes. I went looking for it. Yeah, this 245-mile odometer is like the main one I could find. So really good job.

Nic

During this exchange, something funny about this that me and our buddy Todd always used to joke about is where they're having this discussion about like, well, you pulled in front of me.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

And, and MC Gainey's like, I saw what happened. During the trailer, this movie cuts that line in a way that makes it sound like, like, I saw what, you know, ends up happening in a little bit. Like, it makes it seem like so much more of a conspiracy.

Steve

So interesting.

Nic

I, I think everyone should watch the trailer to this movie because it is very entertaining. Like, Knowing how the movie actually works, like how they make that line look.

Steve

But also proving to you you shouldn't trust trailers. No, no, no.

Nic

This movie had an awesome trailer. Like, I was real psyched when this came out. Yeah, so M.C. Gainey, very witty guy, he says, hey, you should get a bumper sticker on your car that says shit for brains.

Steve

Or no, he tells him that should be a CB handle. CB handle. Your CB handle for you should be shit for brains.

Nic

He went to the Nic Cage school of taking a long time for a very weak burn, right? Because he was like, Oh, you know what you really need out here is a CB radio. Very Rocket Man code.

Steve

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you like Elton John? Like, you know.

Nic

So, so they're on the road again, right? Kurt's a little spooked.

Steve

A little bit.

Nic

But they're, you know, they're talking about the snacks that Amy had picked up at the gas station.

Steve

Which, these are not, these are not good road trip snacks. These are dogshit road trip snacks. I was so personally offended. She gets snowballs. Yoo-Hoo, because that's what everybody wants in a hot desert day, is a fucking cup of carbonated chocolate milk. And, um, Moon Pies, and then little powdered donuts. These are terrible road trip foods. Though with that powdered donuts, those are gonna get all over the car.

Nic

I got one question. You ever heard of Combos?

Steve

Combos? Bugles?

Nic

Fucking Bugles.

Steve

Give me some of those.

Nic

Give me some of those. Just the milk.

Steve

Yes, the Gardettos with the little rye crisps in them. And then, uh, give me the, uh the gas station brand, like berries and cheese croissant or like Bear Claw. You know what I'm talking about? Like the ones you can only get at a gas station. Let me rock those before I'm rocking powdered donuts and getting them all over my leather seats. Like, it's a brand new Jeep Grand Cherokee.

Nic

And then like all her choices, it's like, okay, you should have picked one of these 3. And then, and then some Slim Jims and something savory. Where's the salty?

Steve

Where's the salty? At least you got to have some salty with your sweet. She went all sweet and snowballs are just garbage. I'm sorry. Those are the worst snacks.

Nic

Yeah. It's the least food-like thing. Like an animal would not eat a snowball most likely.

Steve

But she points out in the donuts that she bought, there's like an, like a contest which you can enter. Sweepstakes. Yeah. And it says you'll either win $90,000 or 90,000 donuts, which does not take much for anybody to realize you could buy 90,000 donuts with $90,000 and probably have about 40 grand left over.

Nic

Right.

Steve

This is ridiculous. You don't need to spend that much. But anyway, that would be the contest. You get to pick if you win the sweepstakes.

Nic

Which is really funny to like, they're gonna like televise it live and have the person making their LeBron-style decision between the donuts and the dollars. I do love the idea of somebody getting like a truckload of donuts that are gonna expire in a month and then having to pay tax on $90,000 worth of fair value.

Steve

I hadn't even thought of that. Look at you, CPA brain.

Nic

You're just like, maybe. So, so as they're driving down the road, the car starts— the dash is blinking. The car basically freezes up. And Kurt, being as smart as he is, lets it just stop in the middle of the road. Doesn't even nudge it slightly to the side.

Steve

Doesn't even try to move over, right? Oh my God. And so they— so, and I noticed because we— because of our conversation about Mallrats, where I talked about the original cut of the movie. They didn't get to the mall in the movie called Mallrats until 29 minutes. I said, oh, the breakdown occurred 8 minutes in. We're good. We're golden.

Nic

8-Minute breakdown.

Steve

8 minutes is perfect.

Nic

I have that exact thing written down.

Steve

So good. You gotta fulfill the promise of the title. If you want a breakdown, give it to us early. 8 minutes in.

Nic

Nah, it feels good.

Steve

Car broke down. I originally thought to myself, because again, not knowing what was coming, whatever, man, I wonder what Chrysler thinks about the fact that the Jeep Grand Cherokee is like the breakdown car, you know?

Nic

Right.

Steve

But I'll get into that a little more later. But yeah, so as they're trying to figure out, they're just looking in under the hood, you know, which is they're doing what I do when I look under my hood, which is just look, because I don't know shit for what's going on under there. So I just go, huh, yeah, this, yeah, look at those, those things.

Nic

You're basically, all I'm doing is making sure that the gas can still isn't in there like in Tommy Boy. Like, that's the only thing I know, right? Yeah, so he's looking under the hood, and this is, this is a very nostalgic moment. He goes to the car, opens the glovebox, decides to turn his cell phone on and give— oh, remember when the cell phone was like StarTAC?

Steve

Oh man, my dad had a leather, like a leather wrapper on a Motorola StarTAC.

Nic

Nice.

Steve

That was his first cell phone, probably around '95, '96. Yeah. And it was like, I thought that was the coolest fucking thing in the world. For sure.

Nic

Not that big Zack Morris phone.

Steve

No, no, you gotta have the flip StarTAC, buddy.

Nic

And so there's no reception, clearly. And yes, I kind of like, ah man. And then they see, you know, vehicles coming towards them, but it's that truck from before. And they just— he just blares his horn and drives right by them.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

And they watch him kind of drive off into the distance, but there's like a hill and like a turnoff area that they can see, and the truck turns around and then just kind of points itself towards them, right? So they're just like, dude, what the fuck here?

Steve

But before that pickup heads back to them or doesn't even— we're kind of sitting, there's this tense moment where it's kind of something gonna happen, whatever. A big rig comes up behind them.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

And stops, you know, and because obviously they're stopped in the middle of the road. So he stops and hops out and is like, oh, you folks need any help? It's J.T. Walsh. And so, you know, I wrote here, naive me wrote here, J.T. Walsh to the rescue. So he goes and offers to like— so he helps them push the car off to the side, which Kurt Russell should have fucking done in the beginning. And then he's like, well, there's a Bell's Diner just a couple miles up the road. Why don't I take you? You can use the payphone there. You know, whatever. And, you know, Kurt Russell is kind of— Jeff is kind of like, I don't know, like he's looking back down the road the way that pickup went, which they did. Once the big rig stopped, that pickup turned back around and went, kept going the way it was headed. So they're gone, they're out of view. But he's like—.

Nic

He doesn't trust leaving his truck there.

Steve

Exactly. He's like, if I leave the car here, they'll come back. I mean, look, here's the thing. Oh, this is the other thing that bothered me about this car. Jeff Taylor's car packing abilities are worse than Tom Cruise's swing in A Few Good Men. Why are there 2 tiny suitcases strapped to the top when there is a shit ton of room? In the back of that car.

Nic

Right, the whole draw of the SUV is everything can be encapsulated in the vehicle.

Steve

And if it can't, then you've got extra room on the rack on top, fine. But you've got excess space inside, and you don't have to have— you could lock everything securely within the car rather than strapping it to the top. But regardless.

Nic

But again, maybe speaks to the dipshittiness of the character where he's like, hey honey, let's do a road trip. You know what you do on a road trip? Strap the luggage to the roof.

Steve

It certainly seems like, yeah, that was sort of the first thought. But anyway, so he says, You know, J.T. Walsh offers them the ride and they decline. And Amy is kind of like, are you sure? 'Cause like, this week, who knows what's gonna happen? Like, he's— and he's like, well, you know, he said the car might overheat it. Maybe it'll cool down and it'll just, it'll be better. We can turn it back on. And she's like, I don't know about this. She's like, look, why don't, you know, why don't we go, whatever? He goes, I don't wanna leave the car here. Well, why don't I go? You stay here with the car. I'll call for the tow truck and then have them bring me back here. And he's like, all right, okay. And this is like, these movies often suffer from moments where one of the characters, almost always the protagonist, you know, the main character makes a choice that you go, dude, that was stupid. Why would you choose to do that? This is not one of those moments. He knows those pickup guys could turn right around anytime. If he left Amy there with the car, now she's potentially in danger from them. He's much more likely— he's much more willing to put himself in that potential danger. He's also not going to leave the car completely alone. He's coming back.

Nic

Yeah, it does make sense.

Steve

It makes sense. He actually makes— and this— and J.T.

Nic

Walsh's character came with a lot of credibility. He took a look at the car for him. Like, Yeah.

Steve

And he helps him move it, and he's just offering, he's playing all right. His character's name is Red, which makes it a Red's Diner.

Nic

Red Bar.

Steve

Saying all the right things, whatever. And so he's like, all right. So Amy gets up into the cab with Red, and they drive off, and Jeff's kind of left there alone. And then there's this weird thing where it cuts, and it's really hard to tell how much time passes.

Nic

Right, because, so if Belle's is 60 miles ahead—.

Steve

No, no, it's 6. That's the thing, no, 'cause there was a town that's 60 miles, he said, but Belle's Diner is just 5 miles, 'cause it's on its own.

Nic

Oh, okay.

Steve

It's just 5 miles up the road.

Nic

Okay, that makes much more sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there was like a whole town Well, it makes less sense to me now because it did seem like the device that they used to kind of show that an amount of time had passed when he got there. Yeah, I don't know.

Steve

It's a little funky.

Nic

But anyway, enough time that he decided like, well, I better get going. And he's checking the car like it's not overheated. Like, yeah, what the hell's going on? And he goes to take a look underneath and sees that there's these wires that somebody had put wires in his car, much like in Commando.

Steve

Well, he kind of looks through the grill, it looks like. So he kind of looks down through the hood and he looks through the grill and sees them disconnected and is able to put them back together. And it's basically the battery connections. It's, it's, it's, they were seated, you know, whatever. And so now he puts it, so it wasn't even cut. They're just, they were just, you know, they came apart while he was driving, right? Is, is what it looks like.

Nic

Right.

Steve

So he shuts it, turns it on. Oh, car works now. So now he's like, all right, well, I'll drive down. He said it's just down the road. So he finds Belle's Diner, parks the car, goes in. Amy's not there. Everybody in there acts like they've never heard of women, let alone a particular woman that you're looking for.

Nic

This is a good, like, dusty backwoods. I mean, I mean, they do a nice job of showing how out of place this East Coast elite is, you know, at a real America food service facility.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

And the way that he describes his wife is so unhelpful.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

Oh, one thing, when he gets to Belle's Diner, it has an enormous dirt parking lot and everyone is parked completely arbitrarily.

Steve

Oh, just crazy.

Nic

Nobody's even parked that close. Like, it's just a random smattering of cars were dropped from an airplane. And he's like, he's like, yeah, my wife left. She was with a trucker with a baseball cap driving a big 18-wheeler. I love that so much.

Steve

He's like 5'2, brown hair. It's like, yeah, it sounds like, you know, 80 million women throughout America. Like, holy shit.

Nic

And then he gives the brand name of her sweater.

Steve

Oh yeah.

Nic

He's like, it was wearing a white Benetton sweater.

Steve

Benetton?

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

It's not Benetton, is it? I thought it was Benetton.

Nic

Is it not? I think probably.

Steve

But anyway, he tries, and because the guy says a button-down sweater, and he's like, no, no, no. Benetton, whatever. Um, as if anybody, right, would give a shit what the brand of sweater she had on is. But, you know, basically, no, nobody's seen her. Yeah, the diner sort of bartender, whatever guy working the counter is like, sorry, pal, like, you know, I, I don't know if I— here's what he said. He says, did you see her? He says, I don't know. Or no, I didn't see her. He says, I didn't see her. I don't know if she was here or not, but I didn't see her.

Nic

Right.

Steve

Which is shady as shit.

Nic

He's in full, uh, fucking guy getting questioned by, um, by the Law and Order SVU, you know, doing the like, maybe I did, maybe I didn't. It's like, fucking A, dude.

Steve

It's— I actually thought it was kind of like the guy, the guy trying to put on a tough face for Chris Anson. Like, why'd you come here tonight? I don't know. Maybe I did come here. Maybe I didn't come here. You came here. You have condoms. Maybe I do. Maybe I don't have condoms. What are you talking about? But yeah, I got a lot of things in my bag. Yeah, right.

Nic

Highlighters too. And maybe I'm gonna do homework.

Steve

Art project. But yeah, so basically he feels like he's shit out of luck. So he's like, okay, well, Look, if she shows up, can you tell her to wait here for me and like not go anywhere? Like, you know, so he figures— I don't even know where he's driving. He's thinking about driving to that town they were talking about, what? But he just gets back out on the road. And then after, like, he looks off in front of him and like on a road kind of turnoff, he sees the truck that he thinks might be J.T. Walsh's, Red's truck, right? So he turns that way and is like heading down after him. He's like honking at him to try to— and Red is acting like, what are you doing?

Nic

He looks at him, he's like, okay, pass me. Pass me.

Steve

Like, who are you? So he gets in front of him after almost hitting a Winnebago coming down his Way, Jeff gets in front of him and kind of slows him down. Whatever, and it's like, and Red's like, "I've never seen you before in my life. I don't know what you're talking about." And so there's funny again, like there's little things that happen in my brain when I don't know what's coming in a movie. My first thought was like, "Fuck, is this one of those like twin things? It's like they're a good twin and a bad twin." And the ex is. It's like no, it's much simpler than that.

Nic

TJ Walsh is twin brother.

Steve

Yeah, right, exactly. Yeah.

Nic

Yeah. So he's just he's not giving him anything.

Steve

No, no.

Nic

He's like, "I have no idea what you're talking about." He's like, "No, you picked up my wife." He's like, look, look, man, I don't know. And then as they're having this discussion, a cop who looks a lot like Dr. Phil pulls up.

Steve

Yes, he really did. And I think it was in Face/Off or The Rock or something. He's like an FBI guy. Totally.

Nic

Yeah. So, so the cop comes up and he's flagged down, like Jack flags him down. He's like, he's like, hey, you gotta help me, you gotta help me, my wife is missing this guy. And of course the cop's like, calm down, calm down, sir, right? Because he's He's like, yeah, I'm not gonna believe the guy who's acting the craziest.

Steve

But he investigates. I mean, this—.

Nic

Yeah, he goes and takes a look. He, in good faith, while respecting both of these guys, I feel like does look and is pretty thorough about it.

Steve

This is not a movie that will earn the asshole cop tag on the website, 'cause this guy does the right thing and he investigates. And when there is zero evidence of anything, and he's got one guy kind of freaking out and the other guy saying, look, I don't know what this man's talking about. I've never met him before in my life. I've never seen his wife. I don't know anything. Look through all my entire truck, whatever you wanna do. I don't know what's going on. I just wanna go. Like, the cop, what else is he supposed to do? He can't like just take Kurt Russell's word for it that something nefarious happened. But flip side, the fact that Jeff is freaking out is totally fucking reasonable too. He's like, no, no, no, no, no, this is the guy. Well, here's the one thing I did think he should have done, and I don't know if it would have mattered because it's still— there's no evidence, but they kept talking about, are you sure it was this truck? Did you see it was this truck? Are you sure she got into this truck?

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

My thing is like, he should have said, dude, that guy got out and helped me push my car to the side of the road and talked to me for like 3 minutes. Like, this is not a mistaken identity thing. I spoke with him. My wife got into like with him. Fuck the goddamn truck. It's him that helped us. And I know it's him. It just, I don't know that it would have made the cop do anything different 'cause there's still no evidence of anything, but at least it would have made him sound less crazy.

Nic

People never satisfactorily explain themselves. I know it is, it is a frustration watching that. 'Cause like, and also, I mean, I will say after watching this movie, like refreshing my memory, if my wife ever does take a ride, I'm at least jotting down the license plate of the car that she leaves in, right?

Steve

That's a good point.

Nic

One thing that this scene showed me early on, it's just a random unrelated to the plot, but when they get in and out of the truck, I didn't know that the seats had those like hydraulics under it, right? Yes, in the big rig. And then that made me be like, oh, that sounds fucking sick.

Steve

But it's like, so because there's like no suspension on the truck itself, the only suspension is on your seat. Exactly.

Nic

Yep. So yeah, I love that scene. But yeah, it turns out, you know, you must have confused my truck with somebody. So at one point, Red Bark says, hey, I don't want to butt in, but Maybe you confused my truck with somebody else, which is like the set card off.

Steve

Like, he's— you talk— because again, that would have been a part where at least he could have said something like, fuck you, in the truck. Like, you got out and helped me push my car to the side of the road. Like, stop acting like you don't know me. Like, again, don't think it would have made a material difference, but it would have been a good argument for him to make, right, in the moment.

Nic

And the cop's like, look, man, all I can do for you is I got a deputy in town. Go into town, file a report with him. That's all you can do.

Steve

Go see my dad.

Nic

So, uh, so before he does that, he pops back into Bell's.

Steve

Oh no, he goes to the deputy first.

Nic

Oh, he goes to the deputy first.

Steve

And he goes in and basically he's like giving information about it. And the guy's saying like, hey, you know, so sorry, like this does happen. People go missing. I'm so sorry this happened to you. And, and, and Jeff is looking at this wall of missing people's reports. And it really does seem like this is a tiny podunk town in the middle of nowhere. And there are a fuck ton of people missing in this area. It's, it's very—.

Nic

There's nobody on the case.

Steve

It's very, well, it's a very good job of showing us that something's going on around town. Right? Like, there is something happening here. And, and he spends probably more time than is necessary. Not that I'm gonna tell a 93-minute movie it needs anything cut, but like, this scene probably was slightly longer than it needed to be because most of it is just Kurt Russell staring at the wall. Yeah. And the guy being like, uh, sir, okay, like, good luck. Like, right, there's nothing else to do right now.

Nic

Maybe though, more efficient than other— in another way, explaining that there's been a lot of people missing from the town and stuff.

Steve

So then he heads back to—.

Nic

So he files a report, right? He goes back to Bell's and he's just Like, he's like, hey, remember me? I was— it's like, how the fuck would that guy not remember? It's all the same people in the same seats.

Steve

You're only the— you're the only rich asshole who walked in here today. Everybody else is covered in a layer of dust and methamphetamine.

Nic

You're the only guy with a double-popped collar walking in here. Um, and, and he is very like— he's very pushy towards the, uh, the proprietor of Bell's, right?

Steve

You know, where's my wife?

Nic

Where's my wife? The guy's like— and this guy's getting pissed. He's like, look, man, And I told you, I didn't fucking see it. She might have been in here, she might not have, but I did not see it.

Steve

And this is the thing where there's a few moments in this movie, and this is one of them where I was like, you know, at this point it's clear because of the whole J.T. Walsh thing, it's like, okay, so there's a nefarious thing going on. I felt like at this point I knew M.C. Gainey was in on it because he was just kind of already an antagonist. So it's like, is this diner guy also like part of this? And I feel like the end result, I'll just say, I feel like is no, he's not. He's just— he just knows about it and is not about to get his neck— stick his neck out to these dangerous people doing this thing. Like, I feel like he knows what's happening, but he's just like, I'm not— I don't— you know, my name's Paul and this is between y'all.

Nic

Yeah, yeah. You know, like, so yeah, I wasn't sure if it was like that he actually knew or that we're being shown like the— that Jeff is perceiving everybody as against him, right?

Steve

There's that too.

Nic

And it gets— could be one and the same where even if he's just a like, I don't get involved with shit guy, then you are kind of in on it, right?

Steve

In a sense.

Nic

Yeah. Um, so, so he's, he's pissed, right? And then he's like, he sees the, uh, proprietor looking through the order slips. He's like, oh, the checks, the checks. And, you know, Jeff's like, oh, let me see those.

Steve

And just, he's like, fuck, I'm not getting this done. If my wife was here, her name would be on one of these, which is like, not necessarily, not if the trucker bought lunch for her or something, whatever. Like, the point being, who knows? But he goes to look and the dude pulls a gun on him for grabbing the checks, which is like maybe a little bit of an overreaction, but he's just tired of Jeff at this point. He's like, get the fuck out of my diner, man. Like, Leave, and so then walk your ass across our random parking lot. Yeah, back out to the park. Back to finally to the payphone. So he gets out to the payphone. I don't know if he's planning on calling the deputy again and basically saying like, "Hey man, a guy just pulled a gun on me at Bell's Diner." I think that's the idea.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

But before he can get there, this other guy Billy is like you know acting like Simple Jack. Yeah. Are you the one looking for your wife?

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

I got a good good good good good good brain. Like yeah.

Nic

He's ranking below Smiley in that, but. Yeah, so, so Billy's, uh, explaining and he's like, he's like, oh yeah, I saw her. She got on, she was here and then she got onto another truck, right? Which way she go? She's like, of course, right? This slow guy who can barely get a word out and he knows every detail perfectly.

Steve

Up north by the river.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

And then finally, but then finally to say, I'm not saying anything else. Like, you know, like he seems scared, you know? So.

Nic

Right. And then, uh, and then Jeff says another great line from the trailer. Jeff's like, oh, why don't you call the, call the police? And he's like, you kidding? Police ones in on it.

Steve

Right.

Nic

Uh-oh.

Steve

Um, but yeah, so then he gets— so then he starts driving that direction, like he's given like a direction to drive. And so he's going and, uh, he's got the cell phone back out and he's trying to call a friend of his. And like that guy has a friend at the FBI or something, trying to get a hold, but like that's reception super spotty and like dropping and it's getting frustrating. And then he hits a, you know, the place, the way, basically the way they sent him was to a dead end, to a closed road.

Nic

Yep.

Steve

And so he gets up there and sure enough, coming up behind him is that F-150 pickup truck with MC Gainey in it. And he's got a rifle and he's like, get out of the car. And so Jeff gets and busts through the fences. And this is just a fantastic car chase.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

Really amazing, you know, along this sort of like construction, you know, this highway, but it's under construction. So there's parts of it that are potholes and parts of it that are dirt and there's all this kind of stuff and he's gotta like dodge these, uh, really enormous, you know, uh, construction equipment and everything. And it's really wonderful.

Nic

Any negative perception about the Jeep Grand Cherokee that you would have had from the beginning of the movie is erased by how awesome it's like managing all these—.

Steve

Note here, I got to get me a Grand Cherokee because it really kills it in this chase. And then it's like, and then he goes and he's— it looks like he's at a cliff edge, like a real cliff edge, but turns out it's just a very steep slope. But at the bottom is just the river and he's just like, I got nowhere else to go, dude's got a drives down, slides on the thing, and gets into the water and is like floating down the river while MC Gainey keeps shooting at him.

Nic

The drive down was really funny.

Steve

Oh man.

Nic

Yeah, 'cause he's just barreling down this hill going, as you wish, right? Uh, so, so MC Gainey is like shooting at him very accurately, right? And the problem, I mean, he's getting close. He's getting close, it's true. And I thought that, uh, there was a bit of a miss here a bit of a missed opportunity in that his truck is like in the water and it seems like he can't go out one of the windows because he's getting shot at. So he has to go the other way out of the car. If it was like a failure of the automatic window as opposed to the crank window where like he can't get it down, so he has to go out the dangerous way.

Steve

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nic

But again, the Chrysler Corporation wouldn't allow for that.

Steve

I also think he probably for his own safety should have actually— oh, that's where the car got stuck. That's what happened, right? The car itself got stuck in the rocks. I'm like, why doesn't he just like stay behind it then? Is it— but it had stopped moving. He had to keep going.

Nic

He had Yeah, he's really— he's river wilding it, and he's able to climb out, and he's kind of like checking out the scene after the fact. And he's looking, and he can see that now another truck has shown up with a winch that's pulling his Jeep out of the river.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

And there's a couple guys talking about, yeah, they got away.

Steve

And it's M.C. Gainey, whose character's name is Earl. So it's Earl and this other kind of fat guy who was driving the truck when Jeff almost hit it at the beginning.

Nic

Okay.

Steve

He was actually the one driving. That's why when MC Gainey says, uh, I saw what happened, is because he wasn't the one driving.

Nic

Okay, gotcha.

Steve

Um, so there's this other guy and they're just yelling about like, oh man, like this is what happens when you don't get them both. Oh, goddamn it. So it's like, oh wow, so this is like a planned thing, like the whole deal. Uh, and before, uh, uh, Jeff can do anything about it or go anywhere else, he basically hears a sound behind him, turns around, and Billy is there.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

Not as simple as he played, right? And just smacks him with the butt of a rifle, knocks him out.

Nic

Single strike KO. We love to see him.

Steve

Yep.

Nic

Um, as he comes to, you know, he's got the guys like slapping him in the face, you know, waking him up very unpleasantly. And we got Billy looking at him, and of course he's talking now in his regular voice. He's like, I'm not slow, whatever.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

I love when a character is like, they're pretending, right? So he's pretending to be slow, and he— they add in unnecessary details.

Steve

Okay.

Nic

Where he's just like, I always wanted to get my truck driver's license. Like, why the fuck did you say— like, just doing a little Extra character work, like they're like do your henchman work and he's freelancing a little bit.

Steve

Yeah, but it's also like I feel like from a character standpoint, it's a good deflection by adding stupid little details like that. You seem less threatening.

Nic

Yeah, yeah.

Steve

The more you're willing to just tell somebody a weird thing about your life, the less threatening you seem. Totally, you know. So definitely.

Nic

And maybe he's better at this kind of thing than I'm giving him credit for. I think he's part of the crew.

Steve

Billy's part of the crew and he certainly seems like he's doing a good job. Now Red's obviously in charge. We got Earl, we got Fat Guy. I don't know his name. And then we got Billy. So it's like a pretty good sized crew at least at this point. And we don't know who else is or isn't involved, right? I mean, I think there's There's several points that we're gonna get to where they talk about, we'll be watching, we'll be seeing. It's like, well, it's not like they have cameras everywhere. It's down in the middle of nowhere, but there's somebody that's keeping an eye on things. So basically Billy says, your wife told us an amount of money that you have in your bank account, and I'm gonna need you to give me the exact same figure right now or I'm gonna kill you right here. The idea being, did she lie about what they have?

Nic

Right.

Steve

Or is it true? If it's true, you'll both say the same thing. And he starts going, well, you know, balances fluctuate and whatever. And so Earl says, oh, fuck it, let's just kill him. He's no Donut King, the bitch was lying. And that's the clue he needs to go, she's $90,000.

Nic

'Cause in the river he had also seen the package of donuts float by him. So we got like another little reminder right before this scene.

Steve

Good stuff. Good, good, good planting of things and bringing them back and everything. I love it. And it is cool to think that Amy had the same thought when she tried to save her own ass by saying, no, no, no, no, if you, if you, you know, my husband will pay, like we've got $90,000 or whatever, that she used that amount. That was smart as it turns out, you know, and because he ended up having to say the same thing and did, which is really cool.

Nic

Yeah. And I like when, when the dollar amount Is, uh, you know, something like that. Like in Thief, I think the dollar amount was very random.

Steve

It was like $274,000. $243,372.14.

Nic

Like, so it is kind of funny. Um, so, uh, so Red Bar— yeah, starts— this is like one of the sickest things that he says, right?

Steve

Yeah, yeah.

Nic

Where he's saying, uh, you know, you get me this money, you know, and I have something you might be interested in.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

Uh, it's about 5'5, 115 3 or 4 of that's just pure tit. Nice curly brown hair upstairs and down. It's like brutal, brutal. I think that that's what the Saturn Awards, whichever one he was nominated for, is like, yeah, that was it, dude.

Steve

I want to point out a few things here. So, you know, we've seen a few of these thrillers. You know, I think characters obviously like, like Max Cady is a great scary character. Wade, Kevin Bacon in River Wild, is a really scary kind of guy. There's— and they're memorable, right? And there's something about J.T. Walsh's Red Bar that he's not as memorable But it is J.T. Walsh's playing of him as pedestrian evil that works so well.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

And there is this underlying sinister element with a layer on top of it that is just like normal truck driver dude. And there's just something so everyday about him, and yet this just undercurrent of pure evil, willing to do anything for money kind of thing. Doesn't matter who he kills, who he destroys, whatever. I mean, it's really nasty. But like, there is like, the thing that made Walsh so good in this role is kind of what I think made the character less memorable, maybe the movie less kind of like bombastic. But it really is Walsh doing just an absolutely amazing job. By the way, last movie released during his lifetime. He passed in 1998. Oh, really?

Nic

He died that soon after?

Steve

Yeah, so this was the last movie that he was in that came out while he was alive.

Nic

Yeah, he died relatively young. Yeah, it is interesting. It's this kind of evil that like, is for its own sake. 'Cause whatever scores they're getting, by kidnapping people or whatever, they're not getting rich off of it.

Steve

No, no.

Nic

And his life is such a normal-ass truck driver life that it's like, oh, you're just doing this stuff 'cause—.

Steve

For shits and gigs, basically, it seems like. Yeah. So, but basically he tells him, he's like, look, you've got 90 grand. You're gonna walk down to this. This is the town of Brackett. This is all, there's only 2 cops in this town. One of them's out on patrol. One of them is in, you know, that station right there. Here's some binoculars. You know, Billy just called in an accident on an I-40. It's gonna take 'em 20 minutes to get out there, 10 minutes to realize there's no accident, 20 minutes to get back. Minutes with no cops in town.

Nic

Yep.

Steve

Don't fuck this up. Don't call anybody. Don't tell anybody. If we see anything, you know, your wife is dead. Like all this stuff. You go down to that bank, you get them to wire you the $90,000 in cash. You pull it out, you bring it up to me. You've got 50 minutes. Go.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

And it's like, fuck. And we know he doesn't have 90 grand because like Amy and Jeff talked about their money troubles and like whatever kind of thing there that they, that they were, you know, sort of like risking it all to make this move and kind of all this thing. And they're not in great shape, so they don't have That money.

Nic

We know that they don't have that money. Also, have you ever tried to get cash more than like $5,000 out of the bank? It's very— you have to like call in advance. I think we talked about this before, but like if you have to pay a contractor or something, sometimes they want to get cash and it's like $15,000. I have to go to the bank on 2 separate days to do that.

Steve

Was that true pre-Patriot Act though?

Nic

Maybe not.

Steve

See, I feel like a lot of that changed with the Patriot Act post-9/11. Some of those like AML kind of—.

Nic

Definitely more cash heavy, more likely to have that kind of cash then. But it is funny, it's this like, yeah, this tiny town. This is kind of like the towns in— you ever see that movie Hell or High Water where they're like robbing these banks?

Steve

Oh, I have actually. I've heard of it.

Nic

It's awesome.

Steve

Taylor Sheridan.

Nic

And, and it's like one of these banks that they were getting in that town. So yeah, sort of like the one—.

Steve

It's the one that John Goodman and whoever like knocked over in Raising Arizona. It's like that kind of town.

Nic

100%. And we're in Arizona too. Yeah, the visual of this town is great. And the idea that like, I'm down in this place, I am the only one who's anything like me here. Yeah, I don't who the fuck is in on it. This is this guy's town and he's watching me, right? And, and I love the tension here.

Steve

Yeah, they have it.

Nic

Really like this.

Steve

They put a jacket, a specific jacket on him, which, you know, they don't say explicitly, but it's sort of inferred that like this is how they'll keep track of him and how other people might know who he is who aren't even here and involved. Yeah, right. Like it's his whatever, because he gets down to the bank, he's talking to the teller and he's talking about how, you know, the balance in the account is 5 grand. He's like, but I also have this credit card, can you Can you advance me, you know, the limit of the credit card? And the guy's like, no, not really. And so he's like, okay. So he starts trying to tell the guy like under his breath, like, there are these men that they have my wife, please keep riding, whatever. And this random dude walks up and is like, hey, they told me I should talk to you about an auto loan, to the teller. And he goes to the bank manager guy and he goes, oh, well, just take a seat over there, like whatever. But like now Kurt Russell's like, shit, is this guy in on it?

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

And here's what I love. I know that the movie is not explicit about this. I don't think this man has any idea No, I don't either. But I think it's straight paranoia.

Nic

But I didn't fully, like, come to that conclusion until I was done watching the movie.

Steve

Okay.

Nic

Because I agree. Yes, it was.

Steve

Yes.

Nic

Fuck. And, and this is a great sense. I mean, the way they make you feel so disoriented and, like, alone and surveilled and all this stuff in this area is incredibly well done. I do want to point out gas, $1.57.

Steve

I saw that too.

Nic

Got it.

Steve

Got to do that.

Nic

So they're able to give Jeff his money. This guy's working on it, right? And Jeff is like, as the guy's getting it together, he's going in the bathroom, he's very sweaty, he's kind of looking around in the bathroom, is there anything I can use as a weapon? He's really racking his brain, what the fuck can I do here? He ends up going back to the desk and he grabs off the desk a letter opener. He also grabs these bands that they use to bundle different packages together.

Steve

Which why those would be sitting out on the dude's desk like that doesn't make any sense.

Nic

I don't know, but I would look, can you just guess I just want those.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

So, yeah. And incredibly, I will say, like, if you're going to go through something like this, Kurt is incredibly disheveled and you really got to shovel yourself a little bit to, to make these transactions.

Steve

I will say this is actually an indication that that man asking about the auto loan is not involved with Red, because when Jeff leaves the bank, he's got this bundle of cash, right? And we know he doesn't have $5,000 in there.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

Right. But he stole the bands. So my first thought was, ooh, I bet he does like the thing with the hundreds on the outside and then does the bands and it'll look legit at first. First, you know, kind of thing. But that would have taken time to set up. And if a dude involved in the thing was there watching over him, he never would have been able to do that. So there's that. But like, he walks out with this bundle, you know, like a knapsack, whatever, canvas bag of this money. And he walks up to a payphone that rings. Red is there. And he goes, it's me. And he goes, I fucking know it's you. I can see you.

Nic

That might be the only joke in the movie. Yeah, it's very good.

Steve

But basically tells him like, walk down this street that direction, keep going, the first car that stops, get in.

Nic

Yep.

Steve

Right, which is like a little risky because what if somebody picks him up offering to hitchhike?

Nic

Sure.

Steve

I mean, it's not the '80s, so hitchhiking was a little less popular by the '90s, but still. So he walks for a while, stops when a couple of trucks go by. Nobody ends up stopping until sure enough, it's that F-150 again, the kind of gray beat-up looking one from the beginning of the movie. Earl, played by M.C. Gainey, is driving. You know, get the, you know, get over here, throw the bag in. And he's like, no, you know, you show me my wife first. He's like, fuck you, that's not how this works. Like, get in the car. So he like duct tapes his hands behind his back and gets him in the car, and he's gonna like take him. And he keeps talking about how stupid he is, all this stuff. And like, here's my thing, like, you have absolutely zero reason to think these people won't just kill you both once you give them the money, right? Why would they let you go? You've seen their faces. Like, it's, you know, so—.

Nic

I mean, it's just that desperation holding out, like buying yourself a little bit more time to figure out how to save the day. Day. But yeah, he's like, yo, you must be the dumbest shit yet, right? And, uh, and Kurt, uh, and Jeff in the meantime has gotten the letter opener, kind of gotten it out of his sleeve. So he's working a bit at the duct tape, but he's pretty taped up in there. And, uh, and Earl is kind of like flipping through the money and smelling it. Oh, I love smelling the money. It must smell great.

Steve

But that's how he notices that it's a bunch of singles inside a few hundreds. And he's like, well, these are nothing but singles, But that's when Jeff gets free of the duct tape, stabs him in kind of not the neck, but I guess the upper chest, shoulder, or whatever with the letter opener. And now the truck is going crazy and all this stuff. And there's a gun that he's able to get away from Earl. And basically, like, I think, did they crash or did they just stop eventually? Oh no, that's right. He stops him and he duct tapes him to the chair.

Nic

Right. So he's able to tape him and he tapes around his neck. So then as Jeff is driving the truck, he can slam on the brakes, which like causes Earl to get choked. And then it kind of stays almost like a seat belt. I mean, yeah, it just like— because it's stuck to you too.

Steve

Like, yeah, it really hurts.

Nic

Uh, so as they're driving down the road and he's, you know, where is she? Where is she? Oh, fuck you, whatever, trying to get this info.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

And then that cop from before is coming the other direction and sees this shit.

Steve

He's like, what is going on?

Nic

He whips around and, and, uh, and pulls them over.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

Uh, the cop clearly is like, Jeff gets out of the car, he's like, with the gun, sir, sir, waving, put the gun down, put the gun— he throws the gun down a hill instead of placing it on the ground, right? And the cop doesn't want to hear a word from him until he's on the ground, which you understand, right?

Steve

Reasonable. Yeah, for sure. But unfortunately, Earl had a little tiny like pistol in his shoe, so he's able to get free of the duct tape, get the gun out of his shoe, and as he's saying to the cop, sir, sir, I'm in here, please don't shoot, please don't hurt me, you know, shoots the cop in the neck. Yeah. Uh, and then, and then, you know, shoots at Jeff or whatever, but he's heading down the hill looking for that gun he threw. And right when it looks like Earl's gonna shoot him and kill him because the gun's too far away for him to grab, Earl is shot by the cop, uh, and dropped to the ground. And so that is, that is it for Earl.

Nic

And the cop— this is, uh, this is Jeff not helping here. So the cop has his radio, he's like, you know, officer down, whatever, I'm here. And he's doing the thing that you're supposed to do to get get the— to get help.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

And then Jeff just walks over and picks up the CB from him and waits like 15 seconds, and then he's like, send an ambulance, he's been shot.

Steve

It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, what?

Nic

Officer down is pretty much a code for get an ambulance. It's not like officer down to fuck or officer down to get some nachos after work.

Steve

Did he think— did Jeff maybe think, oh, this is gonna bring a bunch of cops or state police or whatever, and that's gonna make Red kill Amy, so let's stop that? Because that That's not— I'm not really sure what that was.

Nic

I didn't fully understand that part.

Steve

Not the strongest moment in the film for sure.

Nic

But so now the cop's down, Earl's down, and Jeff is on his way, and he got some information from Earl.

Steve

Earl told him we're gonna go to this truck stop, the Texaco on, you know, whatever highway, right? So he knows sort of where to head, where he was gonna be bringing the money. I love this. We get to the truck stop, and yeah, God, I've never seen so many big rigs in one place in my life. Like, honestly, I've been to truck stops along Highway 5 and stuff. Nothing like this. There's got to be 100 18-wheelers here. It's crazy.

Nic

And a good scene of the confusion of like, dude, all these vehicles are identical as far as I'm concerned. All these guys look roughly the same.

Steve

All got baseball caps on.

Nic

And he's just trying to find— and he still doesn't really have a plan other than like, I got to see somebody familiar.

Steve

He does have the gun. He got the gun from the ground. So he's got the gun with him. And he is walking around. And then he almost walks into Red. And Red is on a payphone. He's on the phone. We're not sure with who, but he's talking about the plan. And no, Earl's not here. There's cops everywhere. I'm just going to go— let's go back. To the barn and regroup. Uh, Earl knows to meet, you know, if it breaks down, that's where we're supposed to meet. So let's all go back to the barn. Um, and he goes and leaves. And so Jeff follows him, sees what truck he gets into, and really cool scene of like running after the truck. And then like, I'm thinking to myself, is he going to try to get into the back? Because you can't open those trucks when they're moving.

Nic

No.

Steve

That's too, too many moves to get the thing open, you know. But he doesn't. He goes and he runs up alongside of it and sort of jumps underneath it, like, uh, Clark Griswold in Christmas Vacation driving under the big Under the logging truck, he kind of jumps underneath and is like hanging onto this thing. We get a great moment out on the highway where a kid is like looking at him from like the back window of a station wagon or whatever. But he's like climbing up and I wasn't really sure what he was going for here. I was imagining an Indiana Jones sort of jump in and get Red.

Nic

Get the kid, yeah.

Steve

But then it's like, but then you're never gonna see Amy again if you like beat her. And so he kind of does this thing where he somehow doesn't get noticed in the rearview mirror, which those rearviews are angled specifically to show truck drivers what is happening along the side of their truck. Trailers, but he's able to get to kind of that spot between the cab and the trailer and kind of hang out there while the truck drives.

Nic

Yeah, he can see— found his good like train hopping location to sit there. Yeah, and this was a really cool scene of him climbing his way up there, and throughout this climb he lost the gun. That's right, the gun falls out of his pocket, so he's gunless right now sitting between the truck and the trailer.

Steve

Lucky it didn't like go off or, you know, draw attention to him or anything else, you know. I mean, it could have been Lots of things that went worse there.

Nic

For sure. Um, so they end up pulling, uh, they pulling up to Red Bar's house, right? And he's got this house kind of out in the middle of nowhere, big old barn.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

And, uh, it— what a weird, uh, what a cool, like, property to have, but, like, weird to have to keep that big-ass truck, you know, on hand all the time.

Steve

He obviously doesn't work for a trucking company. He's like an independent contractor when he's not kidnapping and murdering.

Nic

Because he brings his empty trailer with him.

Steve

Which is not normal.

Nic

No. I mean, it comes into play.

Steve

It does.

Nic

But it's like—.

Steve

But yeah, so—.

Nic

I detached a long time ago.

Steve

So we meet his wife and son. Deke is his kid, which I totally thought was his daughter at first. Sorry, little boy. Just thought you kind of looked like a little girl. I don't know why a girl was named Deke. I think— I guess it must be short for Deacon. But like, so he's like, hey, go unlock the barn for Dad, you know, whatever. And like, the wife's like, I thought you were coming back like in a week or 2. And he's like, oh, you know, had to come back. I've got some things to take care of. Like Billy and Earl and whoever are coming, so like, Put on some breakfast, right?

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

And, uh, so he pulls the car alongside, and now— and now I was a little— I didn't quite understand where Jeff ended up here. He was on that little platform between the cab and the trailer, but then somehow climbed into something else. Like, where did he go?

Nic

Yeah, he like got onto the roof of the trailer and then used that to get himself up onto the roof of this.

Steve

Oh, but no, but I meant like while he was traveling, because he was hidden basically. He wasn't really visible at any point. So I don't know if there's like a way to get onto the roof of the cab underneath the, like, I don't know what it was, but he got somewhere where he wasn't spotted.

Nic

Right.

Steve

And then he climbed out from there, climbed up on top of the trailer. And you're right, that's how he gets onto the, onto the top of the barn, climbs through an upper window, like the upper loft window, whatever, of the barn. And this is like, he sees license plates, all these equipment boxes, obviously a lot of belongings and stuff, like electronics, tourists, cameras, and like, also it's clearly tourist stuff, right? And whatever, all these things. And this is when, you know, the other, the truck that he saw when the Jeep got winched out of the river, that truck rolls in along with like Billy's car or whatever, you know, come into the barn.

Nic

Yep. And sick Firebird for Billy.

Steve

Yeah, yeah. And so this is the situation here where now they're pulling a body out from underneath the truck, like a body bag. I'm like, oh man, they already killed her. And, you know, it's like in there and she's not responding. But then as they're dragging her away, she starts thrashing. Yeah, it's like, oh cool, Amy's not dead yet, you know.

Nic

And they're like, they're talking, just kind of chit-chatting about previous crimes. Yeah, as he's watching them, they're just like, man, this was so much harder than those people we killed 3 weeks ago in Ohio or whatever.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

Um, so a great scene though is Jeff sees them like pull this bag out and they're kind of joking with each other about, oh, guess she must have died from the fumes.

Steve

Oh well.

Nic

And then, uh, and then she starts kicking around and like the emotion that, uh, that Jeff has there is, is pretty great. It's pretty awesome. I do like it.

Steve

It went from complete despair, like this wasn't even— like I got nothing else to do here, to oh fuck, I could still save her. Like it's really a massive of change and, and really awesome. And so they put her in, they say, we're gonna put her in the freezer. And they go into like the cellar kind of underneath the barn.

Nic

Well, when they open up her, uh, the little bag she's in, she looks up and can see his eye looking through like a little hole in the slat. And she knows it's him. I mean, but he's like shaking, you know? And, uh, so she knows like something's up, right? A little bit of a nod there.

Steve

Yeah. And so he tries to, uh, so, so they lock her under there. They leave and lock up the barn door. And so then he tries to get her out but can't, like, can't unlock— there's the crowbar doesn't work. Like, nothing works to get the, the cellar undone. So he goes to the house, he finds a gun. Uh, where does he find the gun? Oh, in the car.

Nic

In the car.

Steve

So he goes in the truck to see if he can, like, find keys to open or whatever, but he finds a gun. So he goes into the house and he's, like, walking the house real quiet, real slow-like, and there's the sounds of gunfire and stuff. Apparently the kid is playing Doom on Whatever video game system had Doom. I don't even know which console—.

Nic

Probably a computer at the time.

Steve

It must have been a computer, but it looked like a big TV. But, but he's playing Doom, and then—.

Nic

Sega 32X had Doom.

Steve

Oh, there you go. Maybe that was it. Stolen off of some poor tourist. Yeah. But, but yeah, then he goes in, and then in the kitchen are Red and Billy and Red's wife and the fat guy.

Nic

Yep.

Steve

And they're all sitting around having breakfast. And so when he walks in there with the gun, Billy's the first one to spot him. And it's like this sort of like showdown, but then the kid comes in when he, you know, whatever, and he's got a gun, shotgun or whatever. And so it's this tense moment, really great.

Nic

He comes in, he's like, you know, my daddy taught me how to shoot.

Steve

Like, really needed to.

Nic

Yeah, he's very confident. Oh yeah, that he's doing the right thing.

Steve

Well, of course, he and his mother have no idea that their father does— that Red does anything illegal. So this is just an intruder with a gun pointed at his dad. The kids are acting exactly as a kid should. And it's so funny too because he's trying to talk the kid down and Red's like, shoot him, son, do it, whatever. And then the mom goes, just shoot him! And that's when Jeff knows this kid's about to shoot me. So he pushes the barrel of the gun and it shoots the fat man in the arm or whatever. And then it's like, whatever, Billy escapes and Jeff is able to get both guns and kind of get the other— the kid, he says, kid's your mom. And then the 3 adults and the kid, and he gets them going. But Billy's run off and he knows that's gonna be a problem.

Nic

Yep.

Steve

Takes him to the barn, right?

Nic

And he's— and he's got the gun on Red saying, fuck it, open it up, like, my wife is in the freezer, she better be alive, you know?

Steve

Oh, he said something— read something— she's got like 10 minutes of air and that or something like that. So this has got to happen quick, right?

Nic

And, and Red's wife is, you know, opening up and taking forever to open this thing. But I will say, to, to Jeff's credit, he's not being like, open it!

Steve

Oh, right, right, right.

Nic

You know, he's letting her do it. And she goes in there and she's just like struggling because she's got a gun in her face, but also like, hey husband, what the fuck?

Steve

What is going on? What am I gonna find down here? This is crazy.

Nic

You know, so she opens it and then she's still very confused is able to get the freezer open, but Amy is—.

Steve

Yep, she's alive. Thank God she's there. And she's like, get the fuck out of here.

Nic

I do like that she's like, get the fuck off me.

Steve

She's ready to thrash, which is great. So they lock, you know, the 4 people they have down in the basement, lock the padlock, and throw a couple of like big, you know, mechanics tool chests on top of it. So it's not gonna be— they're not gonna— you're screwed if you're inside. Yeah, and it's gonna be hard to do. But they know— but he says there's one more out there. There's one more out there. We can't just— we're not, we're not free yet, kind of thing.

Nic

And his red bar is going down in there too. He's, he's like being arrogant as he's being placed into the basement. He's like, you remember, sir? And he just gets booted down.

Steve

And so they decide, oh, there's a truck and a trailer not far, so maybe we can go that way and go get him. And I think this is when Billy has got a gun, but he's like looking for them, but instead goes to the barn and frees everybody out of the barn, right? So now Amy and Jeff are in this other trailer on the property looking for the keys to the truck that's there so that they can try to go. So they find them. Meanwhile, Red has gotten into his big rig and is barreling towards this trailer.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

This is the coolest effect in the whole movie, I thought, which is Amy and Jeff are inside the trailer, have moved themselves luckily all the way to one side, like one end, because Red comes flying through and that— through the middle of it just explodes This thing. Yeah, with the big rig. And, and, you know, basically it's making them a brand new door for them to come out, but, you know, trying to kill them. So they get into the truck and can just barely get away. Another great chase sequence. We've got— yeah, the pickup truck they're in, and sort of, you know, and Jeff keeps saying, do you see them? Do you see them? Do you see them? And it's like nobody sees anybody, except then suddenly there's Billy in the Firebird or whatever, you know, whatever it is. Like, just like—.

Nic

I like how they, you know, they're in this area where I mean, it's hilly, but it's not like mountainous, right? And your visibility is crazy far. And to have these things— and it's filmed very effectively. Like, during this, you're like, whoa, yeah, like this car's right next to them all of a sudden.

Steve

Sort of the thing where it's like, yeah, that works great for the movie because it's surprising the audience. Yeah, how would the people be surprised? Why would they catch anything about the car coming?

Nic

But Jeff and Amy, they did end up in kind of like a shitty, like, work truck. Definitely believable as a They'd get caught.

Steve

It's just that they'd see them coming. I think it's my only problem.

Nic

But yeah. So, so they're being chased and then there's a couple of dispatches of the various guys, right? We've got Billy and he gets run off the road and like, you know, the flip explosion immediately.

Steve

Love when cars explode just because they turned over onto their roofs. So Billy gone.

Nic

And it is cool before that how the 3 cars kind of work to pin that, to pin him in. That's it. That's a nice scene there. Yeah, so Billy's gone and now we've got Fat Guy and, you know, he gets taken out. He's gone.

Steve

So we're down to just Jeff and Amy in the pickup and Red still coming in the 18-wheeler.

Nic

Right, and I think Red— has Red ditched the trailer on the 18-wheeler by this point?

Steve

I think at some point he hits the brakes and it spun around. That's how Fat Guy dies, is that the trailer spins around and Fat Guy crashes into that and it detaches from the cab. So now he's got just the— it's not 18-wheeler anymore now, it's, you know, whatever, 10 wheels or whatever it is. But yeah, so he's like, he's Still chasing him, but he doesn't have the trailer slowing him down.

Nic

The most powerful chase vehicle. I love a semi without a trailer.

Steve

T2, baby.

Nic

This is very T2. The truck that Jeff and Amy are in is very T2. Oh yeah, it's true.

Steve

Before the foundry or whatever they go to.

Nic

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they end up approaching this bridge, right? And he's trying to ram them off the bridge. And he effectively kind of does, But then the truck goes off the bridge.

Steve

Yeah, so basically, like, he rams it so that Amy gets kind of stuck, and he's trying to push them off. Jeff climbs out his door, runs across the roof of the pickup, jumps into the cab with Red, and is fighting him. And that's how, you know, because then they're pushing the gas over, the big rig actually kind of crawls over the pickup truck and then gets— is about to head down, it looks like maybe 50 or 60 feet down to a riverbed, real far, but gets stuck on something. Some part of the bridge kind of holds up the axle And it stops.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

And so now Amy's stuck in the pickup and it's, it's sort of touching the big rig, but not, not in as much danger of falling. The big rig's ready to fall.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

So Jeff and Red are both sort of like hanging out.

Nic

This metal bracket that's like supporting the entire weight of this truck. It's insane, right? So any second it's gonna be done.

Steve

And so Red's climbing back and he's trying to get out on top. And then, you know, Jeff kind of follows him and then Red gets a chain off of the back, you know, how they connect the trailer to the cabin, he's like trying to whip at Jeff to like knock him off of it with the chain. Jeff's able to grab it like Sub-Zero style or whatever, Scorpion style. And, and, you know, there's this moment Red's eyes go, oh, because he's wrapped it around his wrist.

Nic

Such a kung fu movie moment, right, where you just catch the eyes right before death.

Steve

It's a little wider. Yeah, exactly. And Jeff pulls him and throws him off, and he falls, you know, 50, 60 feet to the ground below. I will say, he's laying where he's laying, it looks like he would have hit his back or or head on the rock, but there isn't like a pool of blood.

Nic

No.

Steve

Right? So Jeff climbs up, gets back, and gets Amy out of the pickup sort of eventually, right? And they look down and Red kind of like opens his eyes and looks up at them.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

At which point Amy like hits the gear shift, I think it is, of the pickup, putting it into gear, which makes both trucks fall over the edge and just crushes Red. So I love that Amy gets the kill. Like, that is a lot of fun.

Nic

Very, very well deserved.

Steve

Yes. By her.

Nic

And, uh, and a nice like Cyrus the Virus style death for Red Bar there.

Steve

Yes, very good.

Nic

Um, and, uh, and again, the way that this movie— I mean, like your comment at the beginning about it being one note, it's like once this action is done, we're fully done with the movie. We don't, we don't need any 6 months later, none of that stuff.

Steve

No epilogue, no nothing.

Nic

And we get— and it is like still a very haunting like zoom out of them on the bridge, because they're also still in this town where he doesn't know if the next cop that pulls up is one of the associates of this guy or any of that stuff.

Steve

And there's a police officer down who's gonna have something to say about Jeff, right? Right. And there's a lot of legal trouble they still have to deal with, not to mention the fact that all of their possessions that were in that Jeep Grand Cherokee are gone. Yeah, who knows where they're—.

Nic

Their little suitcases flew off the top.

Steve

Like, who knows? And, you know, they don't have any money. The 5 grand they did have in their account is gone because that money was in the truck that got like left at the truck stop, I think. So it's like, you know, there's just a whole bunch of stuff they still have to deal with, and the movie does not worry itself about any of it. It's like, nope, that guy's dead, movie's done. Yeah, the rest of what happens to them is fucking what happens to them, who cares.

Nic

So yeah, so that is, uh, that is Breakdown there.

Steve

Good stuff, man.

Nic

Man. All right, well, this was, this was my pick, and, uh, and I'll go ahead and review it first. Um, on a rewatch, and you know, I've seen this a whole bunch of times. Yeah, it does hold up. And it was interesting watching it thinking of like, all right, what am I gonna say? What do we have to— you know, what's interesting about this movie relative to others? And one is that we're just with the Jeff character the entire movie.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

Like, we don't get any information that he doesn't have really. And I think that's very effective. The way that it's disorienting, you know, when he's in the diner and when he's in the bank and stuff like that. Really, Well done. Um, I don't think this is like a— it's not a perfect movie, but this is like in Tombstone when, uh, Curly Bill and his associates are watching the St. Crispin's Day speech.

Steve

Oh yeah.

Nic

And he stands up and he's like, that's our kind of stuff.

Steve

Yeah, yeah.

Nic

This is my kind of stuff. This is the kind of movie that I like. I was very satisfied by it. I had a great time with it. Uh, shout out again to Matt for suggesting it. And it is an under-the-radar movie, especially like it's not going to come up in the top 5 Kurt Russell movies that you're thinking of. But it's for sure worth seeing. It is spooky in ways. The cast, the supporting cast is all very solid. Not a lot of cast in this movie. Not a lot to it, but very enjoyable and a lot of fun. I will say Breakdown for me is a 4 out of 5.

Steve

All right, very cool. For my part, really, really enjoyed this. Thank you again for bringing another '90s thriller to my attention that I hadn't seen I love how economical this movie is in every possible way. Like you just mentioned, there's not a lot of cast. There's not a lot of characters in this movie. There's like, you know, there's like 7 people we really care about, 2 or 3 more that show up for one scene maybe, and that's about it, right?

Nic

Right.

Steve

And it's 93 minutes long, which is shockingly quick, especially for a thriller or a suspense movie. They tend to go a little longer because there's all this setup. You think back to Sleeping with the Enemy, not only do you have to have all this relationship setup, at the beginning. But, you know, there's that whole romance side quest that happens in the middle. You know, thinking of like the River Wild, like they got to set up so much stuff between Strathairn and Streep before we can kind of understand why it matters. And then Wade can't be evil right away. Like J.T. Walsh gets to be evil almost right away, right? Like the first time we see him, he's not because he's got to win their confidence. But like almost right away he gets to be evil.

Nic

Right.

Steve

And so there's so much about this movie that's crazy economical. I agree It's not like a great, great movie, but it was a ton of fun. It really ratcheted the tension. It's got 2 fantastic car chase scenes. Several times during this movie, I found myself with that like open-mouthed smile that I'll get— I know I get when I'm enjoying a movie. I'm just like, you know, kind of like almost like can't breathe because I'm enjoying it so much.

Nic

When, when Jeff takes over and duct tapes Earl to the seat and it's like the finally— because that's a big release of the tension. And I think that's like, you know, close to like 50 minutes into the movie. It's a long time into the movie.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

So yeah, I've had that look for sure.

Steve

And it's almost immediately tense again because the cop shows up, right? You get maybe 2 minutes of him trying to get info out of Earl, and then there's the cop, and you're like, goddamn it, this guy can't catch a break.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

Okay, all that to be said, I'm actually right where you are on this movie as well. I'm also a 4 out of 5 on the breakdown. Really, really fun movie. If you like thrillers, if you like suspense films, absolutely see it. If you like Kurt Russell, absolutely see it. Yeah, it's not gonna make It's not gonna crack the top 5 of my favorite Kurt Russell movies ever, but that's just because the dude did so many fantastic movies. Yeah, for sure. You know, but yeah, a lot of fun. J.T. Walsh is wonderful. M.C. Gainey is wonderful. M.C. Gainey, by the way, has said, been on record saying he believes Earl is the darkest character he's ever played and that he actually kind of regrets his involvement.

Nic

Wow.

Steve

Because he just found it was so dark and evil as a character, completely unredeemable. And when you think about where else have we seen him?

Nic

The pilot in Con Air.

Steve

Swamp Thing, he himself is not a particularly bad guy. He's with a bunch of bad guys, but Swamp Thing doesn't do much other than fly the plane. He even avoids the guy in the little propeller plane instead of crashing through him, right? I mean, there's— I can see what he's saying about—.

Nic

He lands on the Vegas Strip.

Steve

Which, you know, whatever, that casino's gonna get torn down anyway.

Nic

So anyway, that is funny. That's, that's great that it had that effect on the actor this, this much later. A guy who's been in a ton of shit.

Steve

Exactly. And generally plays like jailbirds, kind of bad heavies. And like, whatever. But yeah, so 4 out of 5 for me. So we are an 8 out of 10 on Breakdown, which is, I think, you know, it's a good score for it. And I really think, again, out there, if you have not seen this, first, why are you listening to this? You just had the whole thing spoiled for you. But really, anybody who likes thrillers should see Breakdown.

Nic

Definitely. Definitely. Well, you're up next. What do we have here?

Steve

Well, we're staying really in the same time frame as this movie. This movie came out in May of '97. A movie that came out in April of '97 is what we're going to do next. And for me, this is one I know for sure that I saw it in the theater. I know for sure that I saw it opening weekend because I took a date to this movie.

Nic

All right.

Steve

Junior year of high school, the girl that I took to junior prom. I think she's now a weather— a meteorologist on TV in like Kansas or something somewhere, which is funny.

Nic

Nice.

Steve

But yeah, so this movie is about a hitman who goes back to a high school reunion and it stars John Cusack and Minnie Driver. Driver, Dan Aykroyd. Like, there's so many good people in this movie. Joan Cusack is also in it, and there's a great, very small role played by Jeremy Piven with a couple of iconic lines. I love this movie. It's got a fantastic '80s movie soundtrack because all the music's from the '80s.

Nic

One of the '80s— but like, when, when our CD budgets were limited, this was one of the best purchases you could get that got you so many hits from different artists. And like, I still love this CD.

Steve

I'll pop this Soundtrack on 100%. We're gonna watch Gross Point Blank this week. Love this movie.

Nic

I can't wait, dude. I saw it. I think I saw it in the theater at the time too, and but it's been a long time, so I can't wait to revisit it, man.

Steve

I probably took that girl to go see it at the theater you were working at if this was at your theater. Do you remember if it was or not? I don't know. Maybe it wasn't.

Nic

Gross Point Blank was not.

Steve

Okay, so maybe it was at Crocandyman. Yeah, but either way, that's what we'll watch next week. A little trip down a little yeah trip down. Memory lane or whatever, and we'll watch Grosse Pointe Blank, which is a ton of fun. That's a wrap. If you like what you hear, please consider heading over to Apple or Spotify and leaving us a 5-star review. It helps new folks find the show. Be sure to check out our website at twodads1movie.com. That's the number 2 and the number 1. There you can explore the movies we've covered, sign up for our newsletter, The Rewind, and even get sneak previews of upcoming episodes. Once again, this has been Breakdown, another episode of 2 Dads 1 Movie. I'm Steve.

Nic

And I'm Nic.

Steve

Thank you so much for listening, and we'll catch you next week.

Nic

Thanks, everyone.