Highwaymen Review
Existing on a sandy desert plane somewhere between The_Hitcher and Breakdown, director Robert_Harmon's on-the-road revenge flick isn't quite the steaming dog pile suggested by its extremely limited release (the film was initially relegated to a mere handful of Southwestern movie theaters), and even if some viewers may feel like they have been down this road before, Highwaymen does manage to offer a few memorable suspense sequences despite frequent lapses into clichéd territory. From the determined widower who won't stop until his wife's murder is avenged to the initially-hesitant-but-quickly-convinced psycho fodder with whom he eventually teams to take down the killer (and who just so happens to bear a more than passing resemblance to his beloved, deceased wife), Highwaymen almost seems to wear its rigid adherence to convention as a badge of honor -- a fact that makes the film go down something like the greasy fast-food hamburger we've eaten a million times before but still can't quite resist when pulling up to the drive-through window. Anyone familiar with the basic revenge formula will likely have this road trip mapped out right around the 15-minute mark, though given a relatively brief running time of 81 minutes, the journey is almost as brief as it is benign. If it never quite reaches the delirious, demented heights of Harmon's aforementioned C._Thomas_Howell/Rutger_Hauer nail-biter (or even director John_Dahl's more recent Joyride for that matter), Highwaymen at least makes up for it's unavoidable shortcomings by rapidly accelerating from the starting line and never downshifting or glancing in the rear-view mirror. Jason Buchanan, Rovi
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