Thrills built on a sound psychological foundation: the unease of being a stranger. A Massachusetts yuppie couple, driving cross-country, become separated by car trouble, and the husband afterwards can't find the wife. This situation might call to mind the Dutch suspense film, The Vanishing, except that the trail never cools down to the status of a case on TV's Unsolved Mysteries. It stays very warm indeed. The sequence of events would likely not hold up to scrutiny on a second viewing (why would the wife's abductors permit the husband enough freedom of movement to talk to a cop?), but the cloak of mystery is so opaque, and the pace so rapid, that the only pressing complaint the first time through is with the eventual attainment of wretched excess. They had a nice little thriller going. They wouldn't rest until they had a supercolossal wow. Yet even as the action gets extreme, the actor does not. Kurt Russell, who can be convincingly heroic (Tombstone, Escape from L.A.) and can also be convincingly average (Silkwood, Unlawful Entry), lets no steely glint of confidence, no certainty of predestined triumph, contaminate his desperate Everyman. He keeps his feet planted firmly on the ground. The movie ultimately gets away from him. Kathleen Quinlan, J.T. Walsh, M.C. Gainey; directed by Jonathan Mostow. (1997) — Duncan Shepherd
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