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.
