Breakdown - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray (Paramount Scares Vol. 2 Edition)

As I reviewed Breakdown a mere three years ago, I don’t have anything new to add to my review. It’s a great flick! Jonathan Mostow crafted a nicely wound, tight, tense, road Thriller. And while it is now a part of the Paramount Scares lineup implying it’s more of a Horror film, I still stand by it as a Thriller. Yes, I know there’s some bleedover between the genres like The Silence of the Lambs or The Vanishing, but Breakdown isn’t like The Hitcher. Some Horror elements may align, but I’d click this one into strict thriller territory kind of making it the odd man out of the four-film set. All that genre semantics aside, here’s what I thought about the film back in 2021: 

Moving across the country is never easy. For Jeff and Amy Taylor (Kurt Russell and Kathleen Quinlan), life is already on a shoestring budget as they’re set to start new jobs in San Diago. Then inexplicably their new Jeep decides to die on an open stretch of desert highway. When friendly truck driver Red (the late great J.T. Walsh) arrives to help, Amy accepts a ride to a diner five miles down the road. Discovering his vehicle had been tampered with, Jeff fixes the problem and speeds off to collect his wife. Only his wife never made it to the diner. Desperate and without any help from police, Jeff must track down the men that abducted his wife all on his own. 

1997 was a great year for thrillers. The Game, L.A. Confidential, Donnie Brasco, and Lost Highway were just a few of the gems that came out that year. One that I feel often gets overlooked in that shuffle is the Jonathan Mostow and Kurt Russell team-up - Breakdown. Part The Vanishing, part Duel, Breakdown skims the line of the classic everyman thriller and the everyman action film. We have an average Joe (or average Jeff in this case) who is in way over his head. He’s more brain than brawn and is pushed to the point where he has to fight back. While the film has great action sequences, it’s focused on Russell’s performance to sell the suspense with J.T. Walsh selling the terror. 

At just over 90 minutes, the film has a smart deliberate pace to it. It hits the gas and lets off teasing big action beats only to pull away and go in a different direction. Russell’s always been a capable performer, but I love him here as he’s delivering a genuine full-bodied performance. He’s always tensed up, and his shoulders are never relaxed, on top of doing some impressive stunt work for the big action beats. He sells the desperate situation in a way I don’t think many actors could without appearing too overconfident.

J.T. Walsh was the perfect antagonist for Russell. Walsh was a genuine true character actor who could play anyone. He could be a sadistic army sergeant in Good Morning Viet Nam, a dopy lawyer in The Client, or he could steal the show by delivering the best dialog scene of a movie he’s hardly even in like Outbreak. In Breakdown Walsh is absolutely menacing barely ever raising his voice. Hat tip to M.C. Gainey and Jack Noseworthy as the colorful minions. Kathleen Quinlan may not have enjoyed much screen time, but those precious few moments early in the film with Russell quickly established the chemistry necessary to make this whole situation believable. 

While I have a lot of praise to heap on the film, I recognize, it’s not perfect. The final act starts to feel a bit more like a mash-up of The Hills Have Eyes meets Mad Max. The chase sequence is certainly thrilling, but it’s a bit of a left fielder. Our band of villains has a clean deal they’ve been working because they go unnoticed by the police. This high-octane road carnage finale certainly gets the blood pumping but it feels more at home in a horror movie than the thoughtful, purposeful thriller we watched for the last hour. Obviously, some sort of final conflict had to happen, but the whole film up to that point was a case study in “less is more.” A little less would have yielded a whole lot more. 

But if my only complaint about Breakdown is an action-packed finale that’s still pretty damn satisfying and entertaining, that’s really not a lot to complain about. Throughout, Mostow keeps the movie flowing, peeling back pieces of the plot onion until one hell of a reveal hits. The film may slip on some predictable genre conventions, but it also deftly dodges several others. The film smartly moves fast enough that the audience doesn’t get the time to think about this situation logically. You’re just pinned back in your seat hit with the same beats of adrenaline. If you skipped Breakout in theaters way back when or missed it when it was a VHS rental gem, now’s as good a time as any to catch up with it. 

Vital Disc Stats: The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray 

Jonathan Mostow’s Breakdown parks onto 4K UHD as part of the Paramount Scares Vol 2 four-folm collection. With its own 4K UHD + Blu-ray set, it gets a custom slipcover while the main packaging recreates the original theatrical poster art. Inside, the 4K is pressed on a BD-66 disc with a BD-50 disc holding up the 1080p end and bonus features (which is the same as the Paramount Presents disc, incidentally). Each disc loads to a static image main menu with standard navigation options. Note - all of the pics are from the included Blu-ray, at the moment we haven’t been able to rip the 4K disc. When we can we aim to circle back and get full 4K-sourced images in here and possibly a video sample.

When I reviewed Breakdown back in 2021, I gave it overall solid marks. The 1080p disc was very strong but never really popped to life in the way that I’d hoped. Now in 2160p with Dolby Vision HDR, I’d way we’re getting what we probably should have received on disc right from the jump. The film’s bitrate stays true and strong without the odd dips and dropouts like so many Paramounted releases before - so that’s a great thing to see. Some of the soft photography I noted in 1080p remain, but the rest of the film picks up a welcome visual upgrade. Those fine lines in facial features, the dust and grit of the desert highways, and wear and tear on the various vehicles all look notably sharper and cleaner. Perhaps not a strictly night and day, apples and oranges improvement but enough to pick this as the winner. Film grain is intact without looking out of sorts or scrubbed clean. I found the Dolby Vision grade to be a real asset with the desert vistas and all of the natural lighting. This is some serious sun-drenched territory but now we get to enjoy a little more nuance to the shadows and lighting giving the image depth a nice little kick. Colors and Black levels aren’t radically different from Blu-ray to 4K, but do enjoy a little more nuance and care. All around a lovely disc for a 1990s back catalog title.

True to form for Paramount we see the same Dolby TrueHD 5.1 mix return and it’s still a solid mix. Here’s what I said about that track three years ago:

Breakdown comes with a terrific Dolby TrueHD 5.1 audio mix. Like the film, there’s a great balance with near silence and loud revving engines and action. When it’s quiet, there’s plenty of atmosphere and subtle surround effects helping build the tension. Louder action-packed sequences kick things up engaging all of the channels with terrific imaging - the river escape and the film’s climax are great examples. Throughout Basil Poledouris’s score helps prop up the suspense. I’ve always loved his work and this score is an understated delight considering he did Starship Troopers in the same year. Throughout dialog is never an issue and levels are spot on without any need for adjusting.

All of the bonus features cary over from the Paramount Presents disc - the audio commentary with Mostow and Russell is still the best extra but it’s a damned shame it’s only on the Blu-ray and wasn’t included in the 4K disc.

• Audio Commentary featuring Jonathan Mostow and Kurt Russell - located in Settings Menu
• Isolated Score Track - located in Settings Menu
• Filmmaker Focus - Jonathan Mostow (HD 10:46) 
• Victory is Hers: Kathleen Quinlan on Breakdown (HD 4:22)
• A Brilliant Partnership: Martha De Laurentis on Breakdown (HD 8:18)
• Alternate Opening with optional Mostow commentary (HD 11:54)
• Trailers

Breakdown is a terrific 1990s thriller. I feel like it’s one that flew under the radar for far too long - I know it was decades before I revisited it - but it’s one that deserves more attention. Now I don’t quite find this film falls under the Horror genre, at least not quite enough to fully understand why within this Paramount Scares Vol. 2 box set. But that’s just genre semantics when you get right down to it. As a film it’s great and as a 4K release, it’s a welcome upgrade thanks to the added resolution and Dolby Vision grade. We see the superior video transfer we probably should have had from the jump. Audio is still a great mix for this slow-burn feature and the bonus features, while not the biggest selection are worth checking out if you haven’t gone through them already. Probably the best release overall of this set - Highly Recommended