Pânico na Estrada

I have seen some real cheesy made for tv movies in my time but this one really takes the cake. For one, why is it called ROAD RAGE? This movie is 80% about some sick guy obsessing over some chick that cut him off. I have to admit that I did get a nightmare after I watched this movie. It did freak me out a little. The movie was not horrible but it could have been better. With TV movies like Noah's Ark and Merlin standards should have been set.

This is a prime example of been there, done that filming. Hasn't been that long since I saw one very much like this in which a pair of loonies terrorized a family with a car: a situation which could have been resolved with a good twice barrel 12 gauge scattergun. Not that this was a complete waste of time, but the producers were just operating within the old psycho/scared woman mold which has been beaten to death over the years. These folks knew who the bad guy was; why not merely show up at his doorstep late one night and pour a SUV full of high octane whup-ass on the sucker's pointy little head till he got the message that anymore highway hijinks would be totally unacceptable. Only if you just gotta see a film and nothing else is playing.

Movies like this seem to be the staple of the Lifetime cable network. Do women really enjoy these endlessly repetitive women-in-jeopardy flicks? Utterly forgettable by-the-numbers trash. In movies like this the cops always claim there's nothing they can do so the "victim" can take the law into their own hands. I guess that's called empowerment. Jere Burns is a creepy slimy stalker, but the rest of the cast, and movie, are forgettable. * out of *****

Yasmine Bleeth cuts off the driver of a delivery truck and spends the next 2 hours fighting for her life. How appropriate the man is driving a bevRAGE delivery truck. If you ever find yourself in a similar situation you can use this movie as a blueprint for how to avoid disaster. This movie pretty much goes through the motions without too much effort. A little more raving by the villain would have added some camp value.

I drive 500 miles a week on metro LA freeways, so I know about road rage. There is alot of potential for such a topic, but this made for TV movie exploited only a small fraction. The actual topic was stalking. Actual road rage is very anonymous stuff, acted out from behind the shell of your automobile. The script is very unoriginal, but I guess that it is the norm nowadays, especially in network prime time. I saw bits of "Duel", "Crash", "Play Misty For Me" and "Cape Fear". On the other hand, I really appreciated the film as part of the genre of "bad drama". It was really bad. I mean you get a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader and a rent a stud Contractor with a 16 year old daughter who has a hard time looking under 25 and then you get a frustrated pitcher out of the San Diego Padres bullpen in a big Ford Bronco and then give them silly dialogue and, well, its made for TV as seen on TV.

This movie works if you have been stuck in a hospital bed for two days waiting to go into labor, as has my wife, so we considered it the high point of an otherwise monotonous day.