**/**** Image C+ Sound A- (DD)/A (DTS)
starring Jim Caviezel, Rhona Mitra, Frankie Faison, Colm Feore
screenplay by Craig Mitchell & Hans Bauer
directed by Robert Harmon
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover I'll say one thing for the font of inanity that is Highwayman: it's completely uninhibited in its ridiculousness. One watches with eyebrows raised and jaw grazing the floor as the film pushes its ludicrous agenda, claiming its outlandish burlesque of the serial-killer melodrama to be just another day at the office and accepting nonsensical free-associations as hard facts. How, exactly, is one supposed to take a film whose felony of choice is a series of hit-and-run incidents with a '72 Cadillac El Dorado, driven by a disabled man who leaves artificial appendages as his calling cards? Or the picture's insistence that this is some sort of "perfect crime," as if the DMV wouldn't notice a little thing like a trail of crushed citizenry? You can hoot at the inconsistencies all you want, but director Robert (The Hitcher) Harmon won't hear you: his total commitment to the concept only deepens the camp and astounds you further. Still, wondering how the filmmakers will top the last meshugga moment is entertainment of a kind, and it goes without saying that bad-movie devotees will find themselves in hog heaven.
Our fiendish driver, one James Fargo (Colm Feore in default villain mode), spends most of his days touring the countryside looking for pedestrians to mow down. He finances this time-consuming hobby through the insurance gained after Rennie Cray (Jim Caviezel), the husband of one of his victims, saw fit to smash into Fargo's car and relieve him of certain limbs. Since then, Fargo's been living the psychopathic Life of Riley, orchestrating the film's initial crash in a tunnel with such anticipation for a tractor-trailer and other automobiles that you wonder how he could have done it outside of a screenwriter's lame fever dream (or a lame screenwriter's fever dream). But this inciting incident is most unfortunate in that a) it leaves behind a survivor in Molly (Rhona Mitra), and b) Cray is out of jail and tracking Fargo with obsessive gusto.
One could hardly expect the filmmakers to rise much above the premise. Could there be any murder weapon less chilling than a classic car from the 1970s? Could there be anything more comical than a semi-robotic Colm Feore reviewing said vehicle across the countryside in an attempt to pay homage to Death Race 2000? The screenplay is so full of laughable conceits and wishful thinking (like the breathless description of Feore's "brilliant" M.O., alone worth the price of a rental) that it's hard to imagine anyone getting away clean. Not that getting away clean is on Fargo's agenda–he's the type of psycho to commit crimes for the thrill of being caught and therefore lavishes such seriousness on the proceedings that you can't miss their ill-advised nature. Casting the ever-dogged Jim Caviezel as the tormented hero was asking for trouble as it is, but the fluid steely-blue colour scheme and the smash-and-grab editing all add up to operatic excess, creating an enormous aesthetic edifice that crumbles around the shaky foundation of the narrative.
Faced with the massive inflation of the wispy script, the other actors have no choice but to look bewildered at the overwrought circus that goes on around them. No surprise that Feore is completely defeated by his role; more disappointing is that the normally-dependable Frankie Faison, in the thankless role of the Peripherally Helpful Black Cop, has little to do except stare in awe at Caviezel's insane ramblings and wish he were in a better movie. And poor Rhona Mitra is low man on the totem pole, her part eventually whittled to that of the trophy in a pissing contest. If Mitra is better than the role requires, that only compounds the insult, as she gives her all to a sexist plaything that demeans her talent. Her character is also burdened with the ridiculous trope that she's unable to drive because a car wreck left her traumatized–any bets on whether that becomes crucial to the plot?
To add insult to injury, New Line's DVD release of Highwaymen is a visual disgrace. Offering a choice between fullscreen and 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen transfers on the same side of an RSDL, the disc is strictly for devotees of compression artifacts, for they will find lots to love as the blue-black images break up into multitudinous pixels. Colour saturation is nice but inadequate as compensation. Nevertheless, the techies have pulled out all the stops for the sound, presenting the film's audio in 5.1 DTS and Dolby Digital or 2.0 Dolby Surround. The DD track is solid, but the DTS option wins out by boasting of more smoothly integrated discrete effects. (The mix is rife with squealing tires and crunching metal.) Highwaymen's trailer, trailers for The Butterfly Effect, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2003, and Frequency, and a ROM-enabled weblink to New Line are also included.
81 minutes; R; 2.35:1 (16×9-enhanced), 1.33:1; English DD 5.1, English DTS 5.1, English Dolby Surround; CC; English, Spanish subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; New Line
