Robert Harmon takes the mood from "The Hitcher" and implants it right down here with some really grim and great set pieces. He can take tension and increase it for the audience and there are certain scenes that are just downright cool including the character Molly's second clashing with the maniac which tragically takes her friend, and a lot of the chase scenes are pretty cool despite being a snoozer. Harmon has a knack for darkness in a film and making it come alive as he did in the mediocre but enjoyable "They", and Harmon's efforts are appreciated here, not to mention Caviezel who's always very good in great films and even in terrible melodrama like "Angel Eyes", he's an underrated acting talent, it's too bad it took "The Passion of the Christ" for people to realize it, and even then the story drowned out his actual acting skill.

I have very little resources to watch new movies, and when I can catch chance to watch a new movie, I take it. I was actually very angry considering I'd have to see this with commercials, because it wasn't on any movie channels, but by the second hour of this, I realized the commercials were actually keeping me awake from this bore fest. If you think you've seen this movie before, then it's not entirely your imagination, the director Robert Harmon, the man behind one of my favorite thrillers of all time "The Hitcher" directs this carbon copy thriller with almost the same plot.

After watching the trailers in theaters over and over, New Line finally shelved this film and then gave it the shabby treatment premiering this without a wide release in only a few theaters, and finally it was stored away and premiered on basic cable network TNT, the only way I was able to see it. Now, I'm a big fan of James Caviezel whom many people now know as the man who played Jesus Christ, but I know him from excellent movies like "The Count of Monte Cristo", and "Frequency", this man can compel and steal the spotlight from other actors, and it's too bad he doesn't do it here.

I was so fascinated with this movie as I always am with certain movies and I was anxious to discover if this was worth being treated so shabbily from New Line or if this was a gem that just didn't get fair treatment, I wish it was the latter, but this just isn't a good movie.

With a plot very similar to every other mad motorist film we've seen in the past two and half
decades, characters that are so one-dimensional, a plotline that is just so far-fetched, and a ridiculous villain, we meet Rennie, a man who's devoted to his wife, however we only see a scene with him putting a necklace around her neck, and there's not really anything called emphasis beyond that one scene, which leads to Rennie watching his wife be mercilessly run over by a car, he's too late of course to help her and he pays for it.

So, we flash-forward to Molly, played by the simply gorgeous sexy Rhona Mitra, a young college student who has a fear of cars since her accident as a child and rides home with her friend until they stumble upon a horrible truck accident. Her friend attempts to get help from a mysterious green car, but it proceeds to run her over mercilessly, and begins toying with Molly merely knocking her over and taking her picture, and then drives off.

The bridge is swarming with police and Rennie who look around the scene of the accident and discover Molly hiding in the rafters, Molly's claims that the driver committed murder are ridiculously pushed aside and deemed as mere trauma from her past, considering the evidence is there, her friend was run over, she witnessed it all, and there's clearly evidence the entire scene was staged by the maniacal driver, but instead she is sent to a help group and comes across Rennie who creates an odd outburst and storms off... which causes you to wonder, why is Rennie even there? To create the outburst, or is he there by choice?

Regardless, the two meet and Rennie, who may or may not be psychotic himself, convinces Molly that the killer that ran her friend over, and toyed with her has done this all over the country, and he always takes something from his victims, he took her picture, he took his wife's necklace, but oddly he didn't take anything from her friend. So, the killer named Fargo (Colm Feore) wants Molly, I can see why he would, she's just so damn hot, so Rennie decides to take her and help her survive so they can settle it once and for all and the cat and mouse game ensues.

Enter Macklin (Franklin Faison) the obligatory law-standing-in-the-way-of-the-heroes-quest-for-vengeance character who teams up with Rennie to get the killer. This would have been such a cool cat and mouse thriller had it not been so derivative, and boring. The pacing in the film and story are so utterly boring and plain, there's nothing exciting here in the grim scenery and uneventful plotline. There are just so many inconsistent lapses of logic, and gaping plot holes here that it gets really frustrating.

The fact that the police don't investigate the crime further, the utterly offensive portrayal of the police as smug and clearly idiotic officials, and just ridiculous far-fetched plot turns.
There are a lot of annoying plot holes and lapses of logic tailored for the plot here, for example when Macklin says that car skid marks are a language, a language that tells a story, but when Renny is asked by Molly why no one has caught the driver, he replies that since his hit and runs are countries apart, the officers just declare it as random hit and run and never catch on, which I though was ridiculous, because sooner or later an officer would have to put two and two together and figure out there's a connection between the murders with the similar skid marks, and the eventual witness.

Then there's the awful character Macklin who is a traffic administrator but manages to lead the investigation and handles a shot gun all the while spouting one-liners and attempting to spark chemistry between he and Caviezel as they journey across the country to find the killer who somehow kidnaps Molly. The ending is possibly the most ridiculous of all as Macklin tells Rennie that they're going to rescue Molly, not kill Fargo and turn it into a murder, but his move in the last moments of the film are so utterly ridiculous I was in shock.

The characters here are just so inconsistent that I didn't know which direction to go into. Caviezel who is surprisingly wooden and looks plain bored is often times off the wall. One
moment he's virtuous, the next dark, the next psychotic and creepy, and so on to the point where we just didn't want to root for him. Molly is also a question mark with no personality and an often bored expression who simply contributes nothing here despite being the only one with a personality. Rhona Mitra, a pure goddess is a decent actress but she doesn't shine here.

The villain Fargo is not only utterly ridiculous but just an offensive character shown too much and is a paraplegic and amputee who becomes psychotic. I found his entire concept to be so damn offensive as his body mostly consists of artificial limbs who uses his car as a means of wreaking vengeance on Rennie, but why kill others? It never makes sense, so not only are officers portrayed badly, but so are paraplegics, and the plot holes continue with him as Rennie explains he was a simple accountant who ran over his wife and hid away and is later explained to have been raised by a psychotic father who raised Fargo to be a psycho as well.

Fargo eventually created his own accidents with his car and killed others. Confused? You're not alone, so was I. Regardless of the boring car chases, one-dimensional characters, and
contrived plot I'm sad that one of my favorite actors James Caviezel would be in this, but New Line did the right thing by not distributing this worldwide, because as much as I wanted to like it, it's a terrible film.

More suitable for a Straight to Video release, this is a ridiculous movie with an awful boring derivative story, wooden acting, gaping plot holes, giant leaps of logic, and characters that are unlikable and offensive.