Sorry for the title. (You slash-dotters will grasp the significance.) Anyway, I can't believe there aren't any other reviews for this movie. It is one of my all time favorites. It is even more memorable because I had not even heard of it, but I bought it on a whim soon after purchasing my first DVD player (there weren't many titles back then) and it knocked my socks off.
Reese Witherspoon and Keifer Sutherland (sp?) star in this wonderfully irreverant, psycho-drama about a beautiful, white-trash teen (Witherspoon) who leaves her crack-addicted, molestation prone family, only to meet up with a crazed teen counselor (Sutherland) after her car breaks down on the Freeway. (Hence the title). The movie is chock-full of surprises, and all sorts of behavior you wouldn't expect from a teenage-girl (or maybe *you* would, but Hollywood usually wouldn't). Another surprise: Brooke Shields makes an appearance as Sutherland's glamorous wife.
The opening sequence does a great job of setting the stage for the film. It is a series of still drawings set to music, that depicts the story of Little Red Riding Hood, albeit in a saucier manner than you'll find in most children's books. I didn't grasp the connection until the second time watching the movie, but Reese's character wears red during much of it, carries a basket into her car, and wouldn't you know it... is on her way to visit her grandmother.
Reese brings an intensity to this role that is absolutely electrifying. She tells it like it is, and is not about to take any B.S. from anyone. We get to see her: insanely happy, insanely angered, insanely calculating, and insanely cute & cheerful, -- yet somehow she comes across as the sanest, most real person in the movie. Some of this same intensity comes across in another of her films: Election, which I've also written about. She also has about the best collection of taunts and one-liners I've come across.
Sutherland's performance is equally dazzling. We see him transform from an intellectual caring man into a serial rapist / killer, a cripple, and finally into the big bad wolf himself. It's an astonishing look into the mind of a deviant -- how he can be so sweet one moment, and so twisted the next.
The DVD version is worth the price of admission. It includes director commentary that I found at least as interesting as the film itself. (For example, we find out that during one scene, Reese hits Sutherland so hard with a gun that his head begins bleeding profusely... and he keeps acting). Much of the movie is filmed on the southern California freeways, and the director points out many of the problems intrinsic to filming on the road.
Like most of my favorite films, this one received little fanfare at the box office, but I hear people talking about it a lot. If you are an individualist, who doesn't like be told what to do or what to think, this movie is for you.
Vanessa is a teenage girl on the run from a sordid and abusive household, seeking to find deliverance at Grandma's house. But on the way she runs into...More at HotMovieSale.com
A hip darkly comic on-the-road tale about a young woman who has an unfortunate encounter with a figurative big bad wolf while hitching a ride to grand...More at Family Video
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.