Wrecker

If you've never seen Steven Spielberg's debut film Duel (1971), with a script by suspense/SciFi mastermind Richard Matheson, add a few more stars to my rating. I say this because Wrecker is almost a direct copy of that earlier work. Some of the lines of dialogue match the film and even Matheson's short story down to the letter. I am confident that if Micheal Bafaro and his crew had the talent to match the film shot by shot they would have, but this is the least of their failures. And to be fair, it would be a million to one shot to find a director and crew as talented as Spielberg and his team of seasoned journeymen. There's a reason Duel has often been saluted, but never remade. It's akin to asking your four year old who just completed his first swimming lesson to hop in a riptide.

I have no problems with remakes, even shot-by-shot remakes --- I really liked what Gus Van Sant brought to Psycho (1999). No, it wasn't as good as Hitch but Van Sant added his own trademarks and came up with some interesting stuff as well. That's not the case here, with only a few minor exceptions.

Emily (Anna Hutchinson) and Leslie (Drea Whitburn) play two Seattle gals en route to California, when they decide to take Devil's Pass as a shortcut. They find themselves menaced by a wrecker (towing a car no less) and after that... well, you can easily take any segment of Duel and match it to this film. So, if you've seen Duel, this film will put you to sleep.

if you haven't it will only puzzle and irritate you because it's so poorly made. Whitburn supposedly quit the film mid-shoot (gee, I wonder why?) and it was probably a good decision. She's the more inept of the two actresses and when she's gone, Hutchinson's short-comings are even more apparent. Glad her blonde hair and figure scored her some marks for some reviewers, but it wasn't enough to compensate for her limited range. Dennis Weaver she isn't, by about ten, in the acting department. It seems a strain for her to work up any emotion beyond mildly distressed without inducing gut-wrenching laughter from us.

Add to that the choppy editing, the dismal sound mix, and the writing that, when not copying from Matheson, just stinks. It's evident on almost all the chase shots that the footage is sped WAY up. The jittering is very annoying (that's one thing digital can't stack up to, unfortunately). Many of the stunt scenes are truncated because to let them play out fully would have been very dangerous with this group of amateurs (and so they have little coherence overall --- scenes just stop cold or look like they were badly cut).

The ending is over-the-top ridiculous and makes virtually as much sense as Hutchison's Mustang looking spotless up until the very end, when it performs an act that defies every law of physics.

Micheal Bafaro doesn't seem like the sharpest guy, but even he couldn't have been so brazen as to steal this script and story from Matheson. No, I'm guessing he paid Matheson's estate a sum of money on the estate's condition that Matheson's name appear NOWHERE on this unsalvageable wreak. And rightly so.

Wrecker is in fact what we can say a kind of rip-off of the famous Steven Spielberg flick Duel (1971). Two girls in a Ford Mustang are suddenly being chased by a tow truck without any reason, the driver is never shown and nothing is explained. So far that can't be a problem but what do makes it hard to watch is the acting and the story.

The first 15 minutes I could dig and it all started rather good with an old Ford being broken down at , you guessed it, a road with Devil in it and no cell phone reception. But after 15 minutes the road goes down together with the flick. The acting of Anna Hutchison is below zero. Normally I can stand screaming girls but she doesn't understand it at all. Of course it's also her character that makes her a stupid blond. When a car is left alone on a bridge she can passes it easily but she stops just in front of that broken car, and there are so many things that doesn't make sense. The cop stopping her makes no sense at all. The gas attendant is acting terrible when she waves her gun. How her girlfriend is being put in the trunk of the Mustang is a don't know, at the diner the way she reacts is a girl with big issues.

Towards the end there's use of bad CGI can't explain when not to spoil what is happening but it's really bad CGI.

What I did enjoy was the Ford Mustang and the truck. Like the tow truck is doing it should better tow this flick to the dumpster.

Gore 0/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 0/5 Story 1/5 Comedy 0/5

You can read all these reviews, but nothing can prepare you for just how terrible this movie is. It becomes painfully evident that all driving scenes are shot on the same quarter mile stretch of road. Some how, SOME HOW, a heavy wrecker is able to keep up with a model year Mustang. And worst of all, you can't stop watching it.

First, sorry for my English, is bad-bad :) sorry,please! I have not ever seen a movie worse than this, how to do such a film... I can not believe how much trash there is in this world to do a film like such a caricature, a really coarse...

A top class Mustang, talk about a V8 5.0 - is constantly overtaking by a truck rust...Really? C'mon! Blonde leading the Mustang can not overcome this rusty truck and when it does not last long and exceeds the phases before overcoming the truck ... the truck are hilarious to beat.However "Blonde" you are as a person driving is unreal how they could create these exceedances, actually inconceivable from reality.You go with 31mile(50km) behind a old rusty tug-truck and actually don't't bother to overtake even straight ... with a Mustang V8 -5.0! And if you exceeded once in the end, you are catch up by the rusty old truck to over 124mile(200km/h) !!! Dude director, you are a crazy head ?? Girls do not have GPS signal...really? GPS? That Mustang has GPS functionality and if all satellites from space fall...

The speed of cars in the film, at one point, caught by the Mustang is 120m (193km) or more, but old rust truck chases and even at that speed the truck is not leave behind! Jesus! Road where happens the action is kind of twist road, circulated rarely and practically in the film did not see a car on the opposite way but when the blonde girl Mustang would exceed the truck suddenly it appears a car in front and can not exceed...amazing, I feel like screaming to moon!!!!!!!! Blonde girl can not exceed even a speed of 24mile(40-50km) neither, you could just pinch a little throttle, the Mustang had sprung in a sec...but no way! Finally, the scene when the truck stays on the road is hanging half... the first phase is seen under the truck a continued road, a few meters if it fall hit the road - and even when falls, when the truck is smitten the image appears where there is a chasm,abyss and the road is not there! Terrible... :) I invite you wholeheartedly for you to watch this movie just to see what was reached today to make a film.Take your friends and watch this movie in a group...will to be phenomenal! At the start of first 15min i wanted to close it, after 30min i could break my TV but out of curiosity to see how far stupidity can lead a film director and producer, i decided to see him until the end...

A terrible movie, even awkward interpretation of actresses is understandable...but what i do not understand is how the director of this film thinks it can fool the world...astonishing...inconceivable.

PS:Blonde girlfriend in the movie suddenly disappears after 40min...here on IMDb says that the actress actually left shooting during production ... Why, he was the only human with brains who realized the awkwardness filming that?

I wasn't expecting much when I watched this movie. I had low expectations but then I realized 10 min in I needed to lower my expectations even more. This was so bad!!!!!!!!!!!!! The way it was filmed , the writing , the acting. these people didn't get paid to do this did they? Yes, Ana looks great but she shouldn't act. Because she can't!!!!!!!!!!! They kept flashing in on the speedometer of the car and you know it wasn't moving that fast. Became pretty funny after awhile. Now I didn't finish watching it, it was that bad, that I had to turn it off and put in another movie. I will go back and torture myself and finish it at a later time. but , please do yourself a favor and DON'T watch this and spare yourself!!!!!!!!