Worth Mentioning - Rich A-Holes Looking for Trouble

We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning. 

Cody checks out a Kurt Russell thriller and a blaxploitation-esque new movie.

BREAKDOWN (1997)

It’s baffling to me that it somehow took me twenty-five years to get around to actually watching the 1997 movie Breakdown. It’s a thriller about Kurt Russell taking on a psycho truck driver – if a movie like this were released anytime in the last twenty years, I would have been there opening weekend. But I must have been in a strange head space in ‘97, because I missed out on this one despite being fully aware of it. And I really did miss out, as Breakdown is a pretty cool movie.

Directed by Jonathan Mostow, who also crafted the screenplay with Sam Montgomery, the film begins with married couple Jeff (Russell) and Amy (Kathleen Quinlan) already in the midst of a road trip from Massachusetts to California, making their way through the desert in their new Jeep Grand Cherokee. Within minutes, they have managed to piss off a local named Earl (M.C. Gainey). We’re less than ten minutes into the movie when the Jeep breaks down on the road, giving us reason for the title. And soon after that, Jeff and Amy have made a very strange decision. Offered help from a truck driver called Red Barr (J.T. Walsh), Jeff decides to stay with the Jeep while Amy catches a ride with the trucker, who is supposed to take her to a nearby diner so she can call for a tow truck. (There’s no signal on their ‘90s cell phone.) It’s a shock to Jeff, but not to the audience, when he gets the Jeep running and goes to the diner... to find that Red never dropped Amy off there.

For the remainder of Breakdown’s 93 minute running time, Jeff desperately tries to locate and save his wife, who has gotten caught up in a scheme being carried off by some very bad men. Barely twenty minutes into the movie, Jeff already has a cop searching the truck of Red Barr, who insists he has never seen Jeff before... so it’s clear that this is going to be a tough situation to resolve. Mostow keeps the thrills coming at a steady pace, packing the film with suspense sequences and action, constantly making things more complicated for Jeff. And it’s made all the more fun by the fact that we spend the whole movie with the imminently watchable, always awesome Kurt Russell.

Breakdown is a great thriller that I should have watched a long time ago. Now that I have finally watched it, I’m going to be returning to it frequently. If you're a fan of thrillers and/or Kurt Russell and somehow haven't seen Breakdown yet, like I haven't, then I highly recommend you seek it out as soon as possible.

ALICE (2022)

Slavery was officially abolished in the United States in 1865... but that hasn’t stopped some people from keeping slaves over the last 150+ years. Mae Louise Miller was around 18 years old when she escaped from slavery in 1961, having been raised in servitude on farmland. Never allowed to leave the property, never given an education, told that all Black people were slaves, and subjected to horrible abuse. Writer/director Krystin Ver Linden drew inspiration from the true story of Miller’s life when crafting her feature debut Alice – while also drawing inspiration from the blaxploitation films of the 1970s.

Keke Palmer delivers a great performance as Alice, a young woman who was born into slavery in a plantation in Georgia. For most of the first half of the film, it appears to be set in the 1800s. We watch Alice and the other slaves being forced to work for landowner Paul Bennet (Jonny Lee Miller) doing their best to make it through their days without bringing Bennet’s wrath down on them. Then one day, Alice reaches the breaking point. She runs off through the wilderness... and finds herself on the edge of a busy highway. Things she has never seen before and never knew existed, cars and trucks, go speeding by. It’s actually 1973. And Black people are free.

Alice learns a lot about the outside world by making friends with the truck driver who gives her a ride, Common as Frank. She was taught to read for Bennet, so she is able to pour through the magazines Frank has in his home. And watch his TV. She discovers music records. She finds out about Pam Grier and watches that all-time classic Coffy. And she comes to realize that she needs to return to Bennet’s plantation to get revenge and free the slaves that are still there.

This could have been an even deeper movie, and when the action kicks in things could have gotten a lot cooler. But as it is, Alice is an interesting film that features some great acting from its cast. It had potential that it didn’t quite live up to, but it’s still worth a watch.