Highwaymen - I banditi della strada

This is an easy to watch straightforward thriller. The type of movie you just back and enjoy.

A crazed serial killer is running young women down and it's up to Jim Caviezel to hunt him down. The plot is far fetched as many action thrillers are but the cast do such an impressive job that it's hard not to get involved in the story. Whereby most action movies involve actors of a questionable quality, Jim Caviezel and Rhona Mitra are excellent in this ably supported by Frankie Faison.

There are some terrific high action action moments including one particularly suspenseful one.

My only criticism of the film would be the pantomime bad guy and the fact that the ending is as predictable as a wet English summer. However there is much to enjoy in this film and i'm surprised it wasn't a bigger hit.

It's been 18 years and a long time in the TV movie/Van Damme C-list wilderness since Robert Harmon screeched onto the big screen with the acrid blend of scorching oil and hot blood that was The Hitcher. With Highwaymen, he's back in the familiar territory of eerie desert landscapes, lonesome blacktop unspooling to the horizon and two men engaged in a dance of death so ritualised and implausible that it's near-mythic. Rennie Cray (Jim Caviezel) is a vengeful fury, prowling the interstates in a battered Plymouth Barracuda as he stalks the hit-and-run killer who brutally murdered his wife five years previously. This deadly game of tag has left his nemesis James Fargo (Colm Feore) a spite-filled human wreck of broken flesh and prosthetic limbs lashed together with harnesses and straps in his customised Cadillac, taunting Cray with newspaper cuttings of his fresh kills. Caught in the middle is Molly (Rhona Mitra), a survivor of Fargo's latest attack and most likely his next target. Harmon doesn't get bogged down in logic and back story for this fusion of Duel and Crash; indeed, his sketched-in biographies for each protagonist feel welded on as an afterthought. Mitra's got nothing to do but look very fetching as she plays buffeted pawn-in-the-middle, but that's okay because Caviezel and Feore are only required to look grim and tormented as they have at each other time and again on the battleground of the highway. It's a tight 72 minutes but the director still takes time to capture the alien mood of the desert, a landscape further imbued with mystery by Mark Isham's effective electronic score. In marked contrast is Harmon's eroticisation of the car, the camera's lingering fascination with the scars of road accidents, wince-inducing moments of impact and the gunning engines pouring from the soundtrack like the howls of coupling dragons. The climax is appropriately downbeat save for a crummy last scene kiss-off and plot holes the size of Arizona open up when you stop to think about it, but this is a movie best enjoyed in the moment.

"Highwaymen" marks the return of director Robert Harmon and composer Mark Isham to the subgenre of road-film terror they all but established in 1986's landmark horror film, "The Hitcher." Whereas that film coasted on the ambiguity of Eric Red's minimalist script and the bizarre chemistry between a psychopath (Rutger Hauer) and his victim (C. Thomas Howell), "Highwaymen" is a much 'cleaner' version of that film--cleaner in terms of cinematography, violence, and overall appearance. It's an extremely glossy production with well-choreographed action and razor-sharp editing that places you in the midst of chaos rather than just assaulting your senses. Jim Caviezel's jaded victim exudes the right notes of obsession and exhaustion, and Rhona Mitra's pseudo-Sandra Bullock looks go a long way as she joins up to hunt down Fargo (Colm Feore, looking like a refugee from David Cronenberg's "Crash"), a killer who uses his souped-up 1972 El Dorado as a weapon. As he did in "The Hitcher," Harmon shows confident skill in photography, editing, and the decision to keep villain Fargo off camera for the first hour, thereby upping the suspense considerably. Isham's musical score sets a proper mood and is just as effective as his previous work. Where "Highwaymen" comes up short is in its straightforward, bare-bones story (padded out somewhat by the addition of Frankie Faison's traffic investigator); clocking in at a paltry 81 minutes (including end credits), one gets the impression that characters could have been developed further and more action sequences could have been infused into the film. As it stands, "Highwaymen" is in too much of a hurry, but remains a diverting, fine-tuned thriller all the same.

Look this film ain't gonna wow audiences and I'm pretty sure there's some enormous plot holes if you dive that far into it, but the concepts kool, the cars sound awesome and all the actors do their jobs pretty well too.

I think the cars really are the star of the show here but all the actors Cavaziel, Mitra and Faison bring enough here to entertain. Personally I would have a liked a bit more backstory for Feores character but maybe that's just me.

Fun popcorn flick that ain't gonna be everyone's cuppa tea but if you like thrillers with a thread of a story, nice sounding cars and pretty good acting then it's a cheeky hour and 17 minutes plus credits.

TLDR- Cars that sounds awesome, nice driving scene's, okay acting. I enjoyed it.

To me this movie was very good and fun. Many people are saying that this movie was bad, but judging by the trailer will you go see this movie expecting an Oscar winner? HELL NO! You just go see it just for fun. By watching the trailer you know what to expect, thrills, gore, chases, the fun stuff! The chase/action sequences were really intense and fun to watch. It was very well shot and some of the slow motion shots looked very nice. The acting was pretty good from all of the characters and made them a bit liakable but still i didn't cared who died and the characters were way more dumb than most movies. One of the main problem with this movie is that it was really short, and it could have had some character development, the scenes with the characters talking felt too rushed. The score was notting to be amazed by, it was too well normal. Some of the deaths were violent but notting too over the top. Still i enjoyed this movie very much, it was exactly what i expected a fun thrilling ride. Could have been better of course but what the heck. Go see it if you wanna have some fun with it, just don't take it seriously like most people on this board. (Forgive me if i wrote something wrong, since my first language is Spanish well i sometimes forget how to write some words).