No Surrender Cinema: Highwaymen
A sadistic driver who uses his car as a killing machine! A grieving husband turned vigilante! A woman desperately trying not to become the next victim of this madman on wheels! It’s a story of revenge on the open road in this edition of No Surrender Cinema, as we look back at a seldom discussed thriller from 2004, Highwaymen!
Rennie Cray (Jim Caviezel) is your typical brooding type. Gruff and unflinching, he rides around the country in a beat up ’68 Barracuda, stopping off in the middle of nowhere to do normal, everyday things like collect discarded prosthetic limbs. Ol’ Rennie’s got a trunk full of the things, which one might think is rather creepy, until we soon learn that those items in his trunk is actually evidence that’s been coming in handy. You see, Rennie Cray is not traveling the country for business or pleasure, he’s doing it for revenge! Five years before the events of Highwaymen, Cray witnessed his wife getting run over, and impulsively chased after the man responsible, plowing his own car into the perpetrator’s automobile! The incident put Cray behind bars for several years, but more importantly, it served as the supervillain origin story for Fargo (Colm Feore), the aforementioned sadistic driver, who was pieced back together like Humpty Dumpty and lived to continue his reign of terror. Cray owes his downward spiral to the pain that Fargo has brought him, and refuses to rest until he puts a stop to his killing spree.
It doesn’t take long for Highwaymen to show us that Fargo is currently active, stalking his prey in a 1972 El Dorado, which has a dull, drab green exterior that reminds one of pea soup that’s been sitting out too long. Although Fargo does manage to kill college student Alex, her friend Molly (Rhona Mitra) manages to survive the attack, which draws Cray’s attention. Like Cray, Molly is also damaged due to events in her past, so Cray doesn’t bother mincing words and explains rather bluntly that Fargo is a crazy SOB that likes to kill people with his car and keep souvenirs of his victims. When Molly mentions that Fargo took her picture during his tunnel attack, Cray realizes that he can use the fact that he’s targeting her as his way of finally being able to avenge his wife’s murder.
Since he does things like wander around crime scenes looking for his own clues, Rennie draws the attention of the cops, namely Will Macklin (Frankie Faison of Banshee fame). Macklin, a crash scene investigator who doesn’t even get to carry a gun, is sympathetic to Molly and wary of Cray, so naturally his involvement with both will end up with him caught up in the road rage rivalry. It’s not like Cray wants the boys in blue breathing down his neck (most vigilantes don’t), and he’s having a hard enough time convincing Molly that he’s one of the good guys, especially after a second attack leaves another friend of hers dead and forces her to go on the run with Cray. Fargo, miffed that he’s struck out twice, decides to turn the tables on Cray, forcing him to use Molly as bait if he wants a chance to finish what was started five years ago. Molly is all HELL NO, but after hearing Cray’s story about why he’s so intent on putting an end to Fargo, she begins to warm up to him. Molly should have listened to her first instinct, because when she and Cray are ambushed by Fargo at night, she winds up the captive of the killer, who would like nothing more than to recreate the moment that everything changed for both he and Rennie Cray.
Directed by Robert Harmon, who is best known for directing the 80’s cult classic The Hitcher, Highwaymen a page out of that playbook by using the uncertainty of the open road as a set piece, using a lot of night driving to create atmosphere and cause tension. While the interplay between C. Thomas Howell and Rutger Hauer helped build upon that, we really don’t get any of that here. Character interactions are limited mainly to expository dialogue, with the sullen demeanor of the Rennie and Molly characters enabling the two to communicate through steely gazes and stolen glances. If anything, the character that is built up the most in the entire film isn’t even any of the human characters, but Fargo’s car! We see how rigged up it is, making Fargo look like a do it yourself cyborg. We hear Rennie talk about how the car is a part of him (Fargo), like a slug in a shell. There’s no gunplay between hero and villain, there’s no diving through the air to save the damsel in distress. There is also no CGI Fast and Furious outlandishness. The stunt driving is as raw, unpolished, and gritty as the tone of the film is. Cars are smashed into, flipped over, missing doors…our characters even torment each other over a CB radio! That minimalist approach is a big part of why this film works as far as tone and atmosphere, but it could also be a reason why this film is barely remembered and only recently resurfaced in the public eye.
Joy Ride was a hit three years before this film came out, and Death Proof followed three years later, leaving Highwaymen to deal with the burden of being the “middle child” in a genre that was being overshadowed by the adventures of Vin Diesel and his “family”. The film also dealt with a variety of issues, from a delayed release (a 2003 theatrical premiere became a 2004 limited theater/straight to DVD release) to a shortened runtime, omitting about an hour of footage. The end result is a film that keeps moving along and never gets dull, but everything in this world seems to happen without consequence. Instead, we’re just bouncing from one encounter to the next to set up the final showdown. It’s mentioned in conversation how Fargo tends to space out his kills, since there’s no DNA or fingerprints to leave and it’s hard for authorities to connect hit and run accidents that are states apart, yet we see him go after Molly and her friends on separate occasions in the same vicinity. Maybe he was just growing impatient since he was being held together by duct tape and Gorilla Glue.
Although I did notice that some of the flaws were more obvious this time around, I enjoyed rewatching this film. I recall seeing the trailer in the theater (I want to say it aired before The Life of David Gale, but don’t quote me on that) and wanting to see it, and the original DVD release was a Day One purchase back when I’d be at Wal-Mart and Target every Tuesday for the new releases. Though I’m the biggest advocate for physical media you’ll ever see, I couldn’t remember the last time I popped this film into one of my players, and neither cable nor streaming apps were showing it. I did recently pick up the brand new Scream Factory Blu-ray release, which inspired this review, and wouldn’t you know it that now that I own 2 copies of this film on physical media, it’s also now streaming free on Tubi! How’s that for convenience?
I am glad that Highwaymen is getting somewhat of a second life. Jim Caviezel has starred in some of my favorite thrillers throughout the years (Frequency and the criminally underrated Unknown from 2006), and even though he doesn’t have nearly as much to do here as he did in those films, he carries the film as the lead. The cast as a whole are all fine, and the Fargo revelation is both unbelievable and unsettling at the same time. I’m somewhat surprised that the sight of a man who is 90% prosthetics in a “real world” story didn’t become more of a cult deal, but maybe that’s what the Blu-ray and Tubi are for. Sometimes it’s nice to have a film that doesn’t try to be too cute and overstay it’s welcome, and Highwaymen is a quick drive into thriller territory that I’m sure I’ll be taking again soon.
