movies
What: "Joy Ride"
Where: Southwind Twelve, 3433 Iowa
Ticket information: 832-0880
Road games
Brothers find that it's not wise to anger truckers in the suspenseful 'Joy Ride'
LEFT TO RIGHT, PAUL WALKER, Leelee Sobieski and Steve Zahn play road trippers who are pursued by a vengeful trucker in "Joy Ride."
By Jon Niccum
jniccum@ljworld.com
Cinematic thrillers customarily use one of two tactics to enhance the suspense:
1) A killer knows something about you, and you don't realize that he knows it.
2) You know something about a killer, and he doesn't realize that you know it.
Movies like "Enemy of the State" and "Copycat" fall into the former category, while pictures such as "Rear Window" and the enjoyable new thriller "Joy Ride" occupy the latter.
In this cautionary tale about the dangers of playing a practical joke on a stranger, Paul Walker stars as Lewis, a college freshman who plans on picking up his high school friend Venna (Leelee Sobieski) during a cross-country drive back home. When Lewis finds out that his goofball brother Fuller (Steve Zahn) is being released from another brief stint in jail, he reroutes his trip to first give the older sibling a lift.
To stave off boredom, the boys begin to have fun with the "prehistoric Internet" that the car is equipped with: a CB radio. Amid the "good buddies" and "Kojaks with a Kodak" on the road, the pair starts messing with a lonely trucker who goes by the handle of Rusty Nail. Lewis uses a girly voice to fabricate a woman he calls Candy Cane, and arranges a bogus rendezvous with the man at room 17 of a highway motel.
Review
Rating:★★★
(R)
Things get out of hand when the real occupant of the room where the trucker was sent ends up in the hospital with life-threatening injuries. The brothers (who were eavesdropping from room 18) realize they are partly responsible for the crime they've witnessed. Rusty Nail also blames them, and the unseen enemy begins a torturous game of pursuit with the travelers.
Director John Dahl ("Rounders") cobbles together effective bits from the paranoid highway classic "Duel" and the recent trucker kidnap flick "Breakdown" to craft a gripping but fairly routine nail-biter. Luckily, he bends the formula here and there — the first half starts out with the heroes knowing something the killer doesn't, while the second half has the killer ahead of them at every step.
Walker, who may be the closest thing there is to a generic leading man, fulfills the same role that he did in "The Fast and Furious" (he's already spent half his career in cars) by providing a handsome centerpiece whose job it is to escort the audience from one action scene to the next. Only in that road-fixated movie, Walker's character was harboring a major secret. The "Joy Ride"
script, by Clay Tarver and J.J. Abrams, offers him no such surprises this time around, and he is content to let his co-star have all the "good scenes."
Zahn is certainly up to the task. The actor always gives a boost to films ("Out of Sight" and "Happy, Texas" leap to mind) because of the manic reliability he brings to a part. Like a slightly more controlled Crispin Glover, Zahn provides an off-center magnetism that elevates "Joy Ride" above its potentially formulaic plot line. In one of the film's many twists, Zahn's character starts to move in on his brother's gal — and she appears to reciprocate.
is all the more effective because the audience is never certain how hostile the villain is willing to get. As with the superior "Duel" (which was made for television by a novice Steven Spielberg in 1971), much of the terror stems from the conceit that the bad guy is never really shown. This person is merely an extension of the multi-ton machine that he manipulates. "Joy Ride" adds a new wrinkle by giving the villain an unsettling voice — a slow, backwoods drawl that is somewhat sad. When his recurring words "Candy Cane" spew forth from the CB, there's a foul tone, as if
Dahl resists the urge to overdo the violence - which
"she" didn't show up for an encounter. (Obscure actor Matthew Kimbrough portrays Rusty Nail — his most notable credit being the beefy firing range attendant who helps Annette Bening in "American Beauty.")
From its "Seven"-style title sequence through its "Body Heat" corpse-switching ending, "Joy Ride" exploits its source material unabashedly. And like those other films, the popcorn thriller manages to keep the viewer's disbelief at bay, while offering a deceptively smooth ride through some frequently bumpy territory.
- Mag editor Jon Niccum can be reached at 832-7178.
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THE.MAG/LAWRENGE, JOURNAL-WORLD