Highwaymen (2004)

Director: Robert Harmon

Writers: Craig Mitchell, Hans Bauer

Composer: Mark Isham

Starring: Jim Caviezel, Rhona Mitra, Frankie Faison, Colm Feore, Gordon Currie, Andrea Roth, Noam Jenkins

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Terror hits the road

Plot: Rennie Cray (Caviezel) embarks on a bloodthirsty rampage to avenge the death of his wife who was struck down by a serial killer - a man who hunts and kills women using his '72 El Dorado.

My rating: 5.5/10

Will I watch it again? No.

Gee whiz.  What a letdown.  There's a good movie to be made from this really neat and simple premise but the one I just watched is rather dull.  A lot of the car stunts are really great.  That's the best part.  Caviezel is bland and a tad too dramatic.  Mitra is fine I suppose.  It's always great to see Frankie (Barney from the Hannibal Lector films) Faison in anything.  It's been ages since he showed up in anything I've watched.  The story has a great idea of having a serial killer using his car as his weapon but some of the wind gets knocked out of it when you see that the killer is all cyborg'd out like he's still in the hospital.

What's worse is that he's in a wheelchair.  Rennie (Caviezel) gives us all of the details, by way of telling Molly (Mitra), halfway into the picture.  When he starts talking of how he put Fargo (Feore) in the hospital and Fargo is released months later but covered in metal traction shit and gets back on the road to kill, I was laughing.  But you're not supposed to be laughing and his description wasn't enough to prepare me for when I saw Fargo all done up for the first time minutes before the movie ends.  This could have been and should have been so much better.  Chalk it up to another missed opportunity.  This came three years before Tarantino's much better DEATH PROOF (2007).  The New Line DVD has a nice anamorphic widescreen print with the only extras being the trailer for this film (also anamorphic widescreen) and anamorphic widescreen trailers for THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT, THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (remake) and FREQUENCY.