Breakdown
With Kurt Russell, J.T. Walsh, Kathleen Quinlan, M.C. Gainey, Jack Noseworthy, Rex Linn, Ritch Brinkley, and Moira Harris.
By Jonathan Rosenbaum
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Breakdown opens with percussion and electronic whines and tonalities behind the credits, as if to alert our nervous systems to the troubles ahead. Then we see a couple from Boston, Jeff and Amy Taylor (Kurt Russell and Kathleen Quinlan), driving through the scenic southwest in a brand-new bright red Jeep Grand Cherokee, en route to San Diego. While Amy is dozing, Jeff is momentarily distracted and almost collides with a mud-spattered truck pulling onto the highway; he wakes Amy, explains what happened, and she suggests he take a break. They pull over at a filling station where the truck also pulls up; while Amy is off buying junk food, the grizzled truck driver (M.C. Gainey) says “Nice car” to Jeff, expounds on its accessories, then remarks that Jeff, who he says has “shit for brains,” almost killed him.
Each set piece is effectively executed, but the characters and their motivations become progressively dimmer and more confused. An explanation of how the kidnappers spontaneously plotted their crime is unpersuasive and cursory, their motivations (there are hints of class resentment and an earlier kidnapping) are even vaguer, and Jeff–who isn’t much of a character to begin with, though he’s better than Amy–becomes even less substantial as time goes on. In fact, plot development is so nonexistent that I’m not spoiling anything for anyone by adding that, after Jeff fails to cough up the entire sum demanded by the kidnappers and follows them back to Red’s house, the only interest remaining is whether Amy is still alive–and this being a standard Hollywood movie, we know she is.
As it happens, the closest thing to a pure villain in Night Falls on Manhattan is a ghetto-bred drug pusher and killer (Shiek Mahmud-Bey) who, thanks to the work of a principled DA, gets his comeuppance in a corny but satisfying trial scene. So the only thing that writer-director Sidney Lumet does to make this seem archaic is to make the villain seem recognizably human. Starting with its romantic and inappropriate title, this is an old-fashioned melodrama, the same movie about police corruption and a cultural crisis of morality that Lumet has been making since the 70s, starting with Serpico. In this particular New York story about an honest cop, the cop is rookie Sean Casey (Andy Garcia), who becomes Manhattan’s district attorney and ultimately has to choose between loyalty to his kith and kin and loyalty to his job.
