Kind of unpromising material, if you think about it. A dozen people in different vehicles thrumming through the Oklahoma night while a mad killer is offing women and leaving their corpses holding their own hearts. (Wow.) What an opportunity to slather Technicolor Red Number Nine all over the screen.
Instead the writer and director have given us a series of character studies that, if schematic, are at least not in-your-face revolting. The violence is no more than is required and the acting is pretty good. Especially good are Robert Forster as a good-natured truck driver, Lois Red Elk as a Navaho mother who wants to see the Gulf of Mexico before she dies, and Penelope Anne Miller as a sleazy but compliant lap dancer. Complaints from others that the script is overwritten, so that the dialog sounds speechy, while understandable, should compare this attempt at naturalism with the arty "Night on Earth." I have a complaint too, though. That damned dog! The doomed mutt that Forster picks up at a truck stop. We already KNOW that Forster's Odell is a nice guy. We don't need his saving the dog. Makes you feel as if it weren't enough that Cardone, the writer and director, had touched our hearts -- he had to cut them out and hand them to us.
Instead the writer and director have given us a series of character studies that, if schematic, are at least not in-your-face revolting. The violence is no more than is required and the acting is pretty good. Especially good are Robert Forster as a good-natured truck driver, Lois Red Elk as a Navaho mother who wants to see the Gulf of Mexico before she dies, and Penelope Anne Miller as a sleazy but compliant lap dancer. Complaints from others that the script is overwritten, so that the dialog sounds speechy, while understandable, should compare this attempt at naturalism with the arty "Night on Earth." I have a complaint too, though. That damned dog! The doomed mutt that Forster picks up at a truck stop. We already KNOW that Forster's Odell is a nice guy. We don't need his saving the dog. Makes you feel as if it weren't enough that Cardone, the writer and director, had touched our hearts -- he had to cut them out and hand them to us.