The Hitcher

One wonders if the filmmakers knew what kind of a film they wanted to make. This movie starts out promising, with C. Thomas Howell as a kid driving across the great dusty southwest (beautifully and desolately photographed and eerie in a Stephen King-esque sort of way) on his way to California, only to be inexplicably pursued by a homicidal maniac, played with cold glee by the chilly-eyed Rutger Hauer. There is a promise here of a psychological thriller a la Hitchcock, with Hauer seeming to have a near-supernatural and truly menacing presence. There is something inhuman and demonic about him, though it's hard to put your finger on precisely what. The relationship (yes, one can call it that) that develops between Hauer and Howell is interesting and deeply disturbing. Behind the enmity, they seem to have some truly dysfunctional need for each other, which makes the cat-and-mouse game all the more suspenseful. Unfortunately, somewhere around the middle of the movie, it degenerates into just another shoot-em-up action flick and Hauer's character seems silly rather than demonic, while Howell is just annoying. After about a half hour of this, I just wanted both of them to die. I didn't care anymore. Had the filmmakers known how to write (and direct) a satisfying, appropriate conclusion to the very suspenseful first half, this could have been a great movie. Instead, it falls on its face--and is all the more disappointing because we expected something better.