The Hitcher

This a tale of a murderous hitchhiker, John Ryder (Rutger Hauer) terrorising a young man by the name of Jim Halsey (Christopher Thomas Howell) who's driving an ostentatious vehicle from Chicago, Illanois to California, San Diego. After John reveals he's a bit of serial killer, Jim narrowly escapes his clutches by pushing him out of his moving car. John finds this endearing and so pursues Jim in an affectionate game of cat and mouse, leaving a wake of destruction composed of mostly shot-up/sliced and diced troopers, a dismembered diner girl and a pesky chopper manned by the worst pilot in all of Dallas.

That's the plot and basically the entire movie. The script is patchy. For me the dialogue wasn't enough to give any of the characters more dimensions than that of a 2D cardboard cutout of the actors in question you'd likely see at the cinema as part of a tawdry marketing campaign. The state trooper vehicles seemed to be made out of the same material as they couldn't withstand even a gust of wind it seemed. To comic effect I might add.

Having said all that, the only engaging aspect of the film, and it's only redeeming feature, was the convincing performance by Rutger. Even his face says, "I'm a murderous cunt. Look at my sharp teeth and wry smile bitches". C. Thomas Howell on the other hand was something left to be desired. He flailed a lot. Ryder even said he was a smart kid which I think we can agree is a bloody overstatement. Upon walking into a diner, he was asked whether there was something wrong but for no apparent reason said shit all to the proprietor. He didn't even check his gun to see if it were loaded. Kept asking dumb questions like, "Why are you doing this to me?!" He's a swrial killer hun. There is no rhyme or reason. He practically said so.

Before I finish bitching about this surprisingly well celebrated flick I want to point out that the diner girl said cops take forever to get anywhere near a crime in her parts because well, as the cinematography also heavily suggested, it's pretty sparse in ye olde desert. But hold up, every two minutes there's fuck load of troopers on there tail? Someone's pulling your leg Jim.

Towards the end John actually gets arrested and questioned after pulling the diner girls legs off. Jim knows his name and gets to enter the interrogation room. In a moment of passion he spits on John's face. John savours this gift, wiping the phlegm tenderly from his cheeks with his dirty fingers.

Anyway, this desert romance comes to an abrupt end when John playfully tosses a pair of handcuffs at the feet of his lover after being mowed down in a game of chicken. Jim 'cocks' his pump action shotgun and blows three loads into John's chest. Exhausted, he leans upon his stolen truck and lights a postcoital cigarette.

The cinematography was at times quite cool, especially in the first opening scenes and smatterings of wide shots adding a sense of isolation and tension in the slower scenes. Rutger was brilliant but the rest, meh.

2.5 abandoned gas stations out of 5