What's the deal?

Review: 'Joy Ride' reaches unhappy destination

By Paul Tatara
CNN.com reviewer

Is there some kind of secret Hollywood handbook that says even a logically constructed movie has to turn into a barrage of preposterous action sequences before it's over?

For about 50 minutes, director John Dahl's paranoia-go-round, "Joy Ride," delivers its thrills with humor and crackerjack precision. Dahl shades his story -- about a couple of cross-country travelers who find themselves being pursued by a lunatic trucker -- with slowly increasing doses of credible dread. Then, out of the clear blue sky, the trucker, whom we never see but often hear on a CB radio, turns into Freddy Krueger.

It would be interesting to read the first draft of this screenplay, which is by Clay Tarver and J.J. Abrams. You get the feeling while you watch the narrative unfold that it's been methodically over-commercialized by studio big-wigs.

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Paul Walker and Steve Zahn play brothers who get re-acquainted with each other while traveling down a lonely desert highway. Lewis (Walker), the younger of the two, is planning to stop at a distant college and pick up Venna (Leelee Sobieski), the girl of his dreams, on his way home for summer vacation. He's driving cross-country, but is forced to make a detour to bail out his black-sheep brother, Fuller (Zahn), who's been arrested in Salt Lake City for drunkenness and disorderly conduct.

Fuller seems a prime candidate for a dose of Ritalin. He talks a mile a minute, and is constantly looking for something to keep his mind occupied. During a rest stop at a decrepit gas station, he buys an old CB transmitter and has it installed in the car.

If you're too young to remember, you'll be amazed to discover that CBs used to be the big thing in this country. Nowadays, truckers use them to communicate with each other while they're driving, or to contact the police when they see trouble on the road. But, in the mid-1970s, every bozo and his mother employed CBs in the pursuit of pointless, slang-filled highway chatter. This was arguably the ultimate American fad: Millions of people somehow felt special because they were talking in code to total strangers about nothing at all.

Anyway, one night, Lewis and Fuller play a trick on an unknown trucker, and a nightmare ensues.

Lewis converses with the trucker in a seductive female voice, and convinces him to visit room 17 of a roadside hotel for a sexual rendezvous. Unfortunately, the trucker, who goes by the CB name of "Rusty Nail," shows up at the hotel, viciously attacks the guy who's in room 17, and disappears.

This sequence is easily the best in the movie, as the brothers slowly grow mortified by the muffled sounds that emit from the adjoining room. They press their ears against the wall as Dahl slowly tracks his camera in on a painting that hangs between them. The juxtaposition of such a mundane artifact with a possible murder taking place next door is unexpected and genuinely unnerving.

When Lewis and Fuller are finally released by some amusingly irritated local cops, they stop freaking out over the incident and continue their journey. But much to their dismay, the trucker is right on their tails, implying over the CB that our heroes are about to receive comeuppance for humiliating him.

That's when "Rusty Nail" unexpectedly transforms into an omnipotent overlord who somehow knows everything about Lewis and Fuller and can drive his rig straight through other trucks without so much as smashing the windshield.

The endless cat-and-mouse game starts out silly, then it gets ridiculous. Then it's plain old dumb, as the truck disappears and reappears with such ease you expect to discover Bugs Bunny behind the wheel. There's also the little trick of the trucker spray-painting disturbing messages on road signs that line the highway. Apparently, he not only knows who he's chasing, but can also drive far ahead of them and determine which exits they'll be taking, as well as where they'll be looking while they take them.

If you're wondering about Sobieski, she doesn't show up until more than half-way through the picture. Her appearance cues a series of events that are so based on impossibilities and broad coincidences that it's as if she's imbued the setting with some sort of black magic.

Film buffs will recall that Steven Spielberg made his directing debut with a taut 1971 TV movie called "Duel," which is basically "Joy Ride" guided by something resembling common sense. If Dahl had been able to control himself, this could have been a first-rate thriller. As it stands, the story keeps coming at you in overdrive long after it's run out of gas.

If you're in the mood, it might be worth seeing "Joy Ride" for the parts that work. There's profanity, a really bad scene containing a couple of bare bottoms, and a sudden dose of amazingly grotesque violence in the last reel. Sobieski, in case you're wondering, remains mired in her awkward, "Helen Hunt" stage.