Thursday, January 25, 2007
I traditionally grade movies with stars. Four equals a classic, three a solid bet, two fair, one poor. Anything less than that, and you're probably watching the latest Cedric the Entertainer disaster - and wanting your money back.
But with a road-trip-gone-wrong story like "The Hitcher," I feel compelled to review it with the Roger Ebert-style "thumbs-up, thumbs-down" system. This is, after all, a movie about a hitchhiker. More than that, though, a slasher flick of this ilk doesn't aspire to four-star status.
It's a frivolous exercise in blood, guts and diesel fuel. You already know it's no classic. You just need to hear whether it will be worth the price of admission.
"The Hitcher" is, despite the fact that, like most horror remakes, this franchise didn't need rebooting. (The 1986 original with Rutger Hauer stalking C. Thomas Howell is a well-regarded cult classic.
) Still, the new "Hitcher" reminds me of an afternoon drive: breezy, enjoyable and just brief enough to end before it becomes painful. In other words, worthy of a thumb up. And that's where this story starts, with a motorist stranded on a near-deserted stretch of New Mexico highway, his opposable digit hoisted high in the air.
His name is John Ryder (Sean Bean), and he just needs a ride up the road to the nearest hotel. Providing said lift are a pair of typically beautiful spring breakers, Grace and Jim (Sophia Bush and Zachary Knighton). They don't exactly trust Ryder, and they shouldn't.
He's got a knife and a knack for killing anyone nice (read: dumb) enough to pick him up. Why, John Ryder's not even his real name. It belonged to some fresh corpse a few rest stops back.
The kids escape Ryder and spend the rest of the movie eluding him again and again and again. The madman is always hot on their trail, framing the kids for his crimes even as he terrorizes them. You can predict where all this is headed.
We get round after round of gunshots, buckets upon buckets of blood. Gradually, what began as a taut thriller unravels into a full-blown action movie, albeit in a winking manner that proves director Dave Meyers (a longtime music video mainstay) doesn't care that he's veering dangerously into camp territory. The final half hour is a tad much - witness a bizarrely hilarious scene in which Ryder guns down an army of cops to the Nine Inch Nails tune "Closer" - but it's hard to rip "The Hitcher" too harshly.
The film simply hopes to be creepy and crazy, and it's mildly successful on both accounts. Granted, it's gory, but the scares never turn fully sadistic, as with the far more torturous (for characters and viewers alike) deserted-highway saga "The Hills Have Eyes." Bean is solid as the lunatic; his weathered face projects loathing for all living things, including himself.
And Bush proves to be a confident, capable scream queen - sultry but strong. Paris Hilton, eat your heart out.
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