| Overall Grade: |
A- |
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| Story: |
B+ |
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| Acting: |
A- |
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| Direction: |
A |
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| Visuals: |
B+ |
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A terrific, fast-paced thriller.
by Yahoo! Movies User (movies profile)
Apr 22, 2007
6
of
9 people found this review helpful
As I started watching Joy Ride, I wasn't necessarily sure what to expect. Yeah, the trailers made the film look like a frightening ride, but the previews also seemed to give most of the plot away, and the box office returns were surprisingly low for a teen-based thriller (JR actually somehow grossed less money than Swimfan?!). Well, have no fear; even though the trailer does give too much away (avoid it if you can), Joy Ride is an intense, nail-biting thriller that surpassed my expectations.
Paul Walker stars as college student Lewis Thomas. He's just bought a car and is on his way to Colorado to pick up Venna (Leelee Sobieski), the girl he's always had a crush on, and take her home to New Jersey. But on the way, he stops in Salt lake City to bail out his brother, Fuller (Steve Zahn, who's absolutely marvelous), who he hasn't seen in five years. Fuller decides to tag along with his brother and even has a CB radio inserted into the car. That's when Fuller decides to play a joke on a gravelly-voiced trucker who calls himself Rusty Nail. But this little prank has an unexpected backfire, and Fuller and Lewis suddenly find themselves in a deadly road game of cat-and-mouse.
Plot-wise, Joy Ride is heavily reminiscent of Duel and Breakdown, with maybe a little bit of The Hitcher thrown in for good measure. The fairly young cast will probably remind some of recent slasher films such as Scream or I Know What You Did Last Summer. But you'd be wrong to merely place this as another teeny-bopper thriller that's simply out to crank as much cash as possible from its unassuming audience. From first scene to the very last (and I do mean VERY last), Joy Ride is gripping, heart-pounding entertainment. What director John Dahl has done is take an old, but quite intriguing premise (the road-trip horror/thriller) and craft it into a funny, scary, and suspenseful thrill ride that stumbles only a few times throughout its entire running time.
Dahl's great with both the physical action and the psychological head games. There are the chase scenes, which are exhilarating and furiously intense. Yeah, they don't feature the mayhem of the car chases in Gone in Sixty Seconds or The Fast and the Furious but they're far more effective because you actually care about the characters, the situation, and the outcome.
Psychological thrills aren't as prevalent, but are effective. For almost the entire film, you only hear Rusty Nail's voice, so the fact that he could be anybody our protagonists encounter adds that much more to the suspense. It's also more frightening not knowing what he looks like, and his voice alone is enough to creep you out (see if you can guess which actor voices him).
The performances are overall quite good. Pretty-boy Paul Walker is showing improvement with every film he makes (he was awful in The Skulls and is decent here; quite impressive, I might say). Leelee Sobieski is like a teenage Helen Hunt, and I can't really seem to look beyond that. But the scene-stealer is top-billed (yes!) Steve Zahn, delivering a terrific performance that would be worthy of an Oscar nomination in a fair world. This man is hilarious, with a carefree attitude that feels entirely genuine and addictive. And when all the on-screen horror begins, he seems so convincingly terrified, you can't help but keep your eyes glued to the screen. He's also got great chemistry with Walker, and I wouldn't mind seeing these two playing siblings again in another film.
Like I said the film does make a few stumbles. Around the half-way mark, the movie inexplicably slows down for a lengthy breather, which isn't paced very well, though it does feature a hilarious improv bit from Steve Zahn when he encounters a group of rednecks. The cat-and-mouse road games are quite elaborate and unlikely, with Rusty Nail knowing seemingly everything about these brothers and staying one step ahead of them the whole time. That's actually only a minor complaint, considering that the elaboracy quickly builds suspense, since you're never certain what's going to happen next (take, for instance, the hair-raising scene with the road signs and the car trunk). Then there's Rusty Nail himself, who at the end, you get a few brief glimpses of. Dahl probably shouldn't have let us get that good a look at his physical appearance, but just as bad is why they didn't use the same actor who voices the part to also play the part (if you know who I'm talking about, then you'll know how genuinely creepy this guy can act and look).
But these problems are hardly detrimental. The slow middle is just a gear-up for the last 1/3 (about 35 minutes), which features one high-octane, frightening set-piece after another at a non-stop pace, all aided by Marco Beltrami's excellent score, probably his best yet (it's derivative of his work in Scream and Michael Kamen's score in Event Horizon, but it makes for a damn good mix). The last fifteen minutes features one of the most exciting and chilling finales I've seen in years. Don't let anyone spoil it for you.
The DVD displays four (!) alternate endings for this film, including one that runs 29 minutes! Having seen all these conclusions, I can say with confidence the one Dahl chose to go with is the best. Joy Ride was unfairly ignored at the box office, but now on DVD and video, it'll hopefully find the large fan base it should have received. This film was released the same year as Jeepers Creepers, that other "psycho truck driver chasing those darn teen siblings" thriller, which I also highly recommend and would make a good double bill. |
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