Harry here, and I'm ready... A good film from a guy good at making em. Alright, I'll see it, Capone sold me.
Hey, Harry. Capone in Chicago here. After prying my eyes from the T.V. for several days straight, I did manage to make it to a couple films this week. Strangely enough, both of them featured the lovely Leelee Sobieski: THE GLASS HOUSE, which sucked; and JOY RIDE, which did not.
JOY RIDE focuses on Lewis Thomas (Paul Walker from FAST AND THE FURIOUS), a New Jersey college student who is in a long-distance friendship with Venna (Sobieski), a girl from he knew in his Colorado high school. The two never has a relationship in high school, but now that they‚re in college and she‚s broken up with her boyfriend, Lewis suddenly has a burning itch to go visit her. He buys a used car for the occasion and begins driving west to Colorado. Along the way, he hears from his mother who informs him that his brother, Fuller (Steve Zahn) is in jail in Salt Lake City. Lewis changes his plans slightly to bail Fuller out of jail, and the two continue on. At one of their pit stops, Fuller buys an old CB radio, and the two have fun tracking speed traps and the like. They even convince one trucker named Rusty Nail that one of them is a woman named Candy Cane, and they tempt him to a run-down roadside motel. They give him the wrong hotel room number, (next door to theirs) and when Rusty arrives, they hear an ugly commotion through the wall. When they awake the next morning, the police are swarming and they inform the brothers that their next-door neighbor is in a coma with his jaw ripped off.
Once the brothers confess to their prank, the police let them go with instructions to never return to the state of Utah again. Once on the road, they again hear Rusty Nail on the CB searching for Candy Cane. Fuller and Lewis tell that driver that their is no Candy Cane, and they soon realize that Rusty is completely psychotic and is right behind them. The rest of the movie becomes a cat-and-mouse game between the three men. The brothers, believing they‚ve lost the trucker, eventually do pick up Venna, and soon she is involved in this self-created mess. The images of this massive 18-wheeler chasing their car immediately bring to mind Steven Spielberg‚s DUEL (as did parts of the recent JEEPERS CREEPERS), but this movie is almost an homage to DUEL and a good one. JOY RIDE is a true, edge-of-your-seat kind of thriller. The first half of the film (pre-Sobieski) is better than the second, although it‚s not her fault; the story just gets more outrageous and slightly less believable as it rolls on. Rusty Nail is a great faceless villain, but he also seems to be a mindreader, always knowing exactly what the brothers will do next and exactly when they‚ll do it. His timing is nothing less than impeccable.
Director John Dahl has been one of my favorites in recent years, crafting such fine works as RED ROCK WEST, THE LAST SEDUCTION, and ROUNDERS. His sense of tension and pacing is sheer perfection. Zahn and Walker have a totally realistic brotherly chemistry that is part bonding agent, part explosive. In the past, Dahl has been on the forefront of new noir cinema, but this takes him in a slightly different direction. He doesn‚t go for the easy scare or cheap thrill. In fact, most of the movie is entirely bloodless (if you don‚t count the from-a-distance shot of the jawless first victim). Instead, Dahl focuses on making us care about his leads. He recognizes that if we care about these people, we will fear for their safety and want more desperately for them to live. JOY RIDE harkens back to classic, low-budget B-movies that, on the surface, are little more than one vehicle chasing another. But Dahl directs this simple story with a great deal of style and energy. And, much like the best of the B-movies, the potential for sequel is so in your face, it‚s scary.
Capone (Click here Or Else!)
Or read my collected review at just click on Steve@theMovies
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