The director John Dahl had a fantastic start in feature
films, making the neo-noirs Red Rock West
and The Last Seduction back-to-back and
then Rounders later. After a
big-budget commercial fiasco in The Great
Raid, Dahl has stuck mainly to television since 2005. He has directed
several episodes each of “True Blood,” “Dexter” and “Californication,” all centered
on subject matter that Dahl has been drawn to and executed quite well in his
film career. It was mainly on the strength of his early work that drew me
initially to Joy Ride, a fairly
standard genre film that Dahl elevates slightly above the average thriller. Coming
back to the film about a decade later, I’m somewhat disappointed, though not
particularly surprised, to find it doesn’t hold up as well as I remember.
It’s a fairly conventional thriller about a psychotic
hunting a few young innocents who played a practical joke on the wrong truck
driver. It plays on the fear of anonymous motels and truck stops, the open road
in the American west, and the creepy trucker stereotype. The premise is simple
and pure: two men and a woman on a road trip use a CB radio to prank a trucker
who goes by the handle Rusty Nail. Trucker takes revenge in a series of
increasingly diabolical and terrifying acts, working toward an intense climax
involving a damsel in distress, lots of screaming and hyperventilating, police
kicking in doors, some blood, and the thumping of an overproduced musical score.
Incredibly, Marco Beltrami, who wrote the score, also co-wrote the Oscar
nominated, so subtle you might not notice it score for The Hurt Locker.
Paul Walker plays Lewis and Steve Zahn his troubled older
brother Fuller. Though it’s hard to imagine Zahn as the kind of man who’s
regularly having run-ins with the law, his presence is what keeps you from
losing attention more than anything else. He’s a charismatic actor and a
hilarious performer, finding ingenious ways to deliver a line for a laugh
without ever sounding like he intended it. He adds levity to the early scenes,
but when things get dark later, there’s less opportunity for Zahn to do what he
does best. Walker was one of the hot young men of the moment, but watching him
again it’s no shock that his career continues only as long as Universal keeps
making Fast and Furious sequels. He
has all the screen presence of a cardboard box. His performance is slightly
better than the secondary actors I used to watch on stage in high school.
The young woman who travels with them is, Venna, Lewis’s friend
whom he would like to have a bit more with. Leelee Sobieski, another young
actor whose star sparkled and faded as quickly as Walker’s, plays her as
somewhat flirty and sultry. Dahl makes no secret about how he wants us to view
her, shooting her from behind lying in bed in her underwear. But the hint of
sexual activity never goes beyond just that. Joy Ride remains firmly planted in the realm of PG-13, which means
it can’t get quite as gory as The Hitcher,
the 1986 film starring Rutger Hauer that is an obvious inspiration to
screenwriters Clay Tarver and J.J. Abrams (yes, that J.J. Abrams before he was
the sensational creator of “Lost.”)
If you can get past the inconsiderable acting of two
thirds of the lead performers, Dahl creates great atmosphere and suspense where
he can, especially considering he’s working off a rather predictable plotline.
He gets an assist from cinematographer Jeff Jur, who’s fond of bathing night
scenes in the red hue emitted by the neon signs that adorn the ubiquitous motels
on the sides of America’s highways. It’s a seldom subtle, but nonetheless
effective way of telegraphing the impending danger that awaits Lewis, Fuller
and Venna.
It’s worth noting that what makes Joy Ride about ten times creepier than it has any right to be is
the voiceover acting (uncredited) of Ted Levine as Rusty Nail. Levine also
played the serial killer Buffalo Bill in The
Silence of the Lambs, bringing with him a pedigree of sheer terror. I may
be wrong, but it sounds like his voice has been slightly manipulated to sound
deeper and raspier. Be that as it may, it’s the final detail that makes this
otherwise throwaway film worth your time if you catch it on late-night cable
and you haven’t got anything better to do.
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