The Hitcher (2007)

2007

Directed by Dave Meyers
Starring Sean Bean, Sophia Bush, Zachary Knighton and Neal McDonough

And now we're up to the McDonald's of horror remakes - Michael Bay and his Platinum Dunes company, which went out reduxing/regurgitating just about every scary property they could get their hands on in the mid-to-late-00s.  This place is a factory.  I think it's a little unfair to say that it's a factory of crap, per se, but there is definitely a mass-produced smell associated with almost every movie that comes out of Platinum Dunes.  Kind of like that episode of Seinfeld with the smelly car.  Since that's the best metaphor I can come up with, you know this one is gonna be good.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present the Platinum Dunes formula: (1) Take source material; (2) "Gritty" it up with as much faux camera grain/Michael Bay shakicam as possible, (3) Add a bunch of jump scares.  Oh, those jump scares.  Platinum Dunes can't be blamed entirely for the proliferation of jump scares in the 21st century, but they're undoubtedly the biggest practitioner.  Man, it really is amazing how just the mere mention of Michael Bay makes me go off on all the ways that this guy has single-handedly ruined movies since 1995.  But let's get to The Hitcher.  I've only seen the original movie one time, way back in 1997 some long-ago afternoon on TBS and recall thinking that it was decent but nothing to write home about.  Still, it was a goddamn work of art compared to what Bay and his Bay-ites came up with in 2007.  Folks, this is pretty much THE Platinum Dunes remake.  Not offensively bad, just offensively mediocre.  Offensively mediocre.  I should copyright that.

From what I remember of the original flick released all the way back in 1986, it was something of a minimalist film with very few performers.  Just Rutger Hauer, Jennifer Jason Leigh (and man, what a hottie she was back in the day), C. Thomas Howell in slightly less cool Soul Man mode and a long chase across the light-filtered deserts.  In a lot of ways, this film does the same thing only it amps up the annoying quotient by 1000%.  The basic premise is as follows: young lovers Grace (Sophia Bush in her One Tree Hill prime) and Jim (Zachary Knighton) are traveling to spring break when they run across the nastiest hitch-hiker in the history of the world.  Said hitch-hiker is played by Sean Bean, a guy I've always been a big fan of.  And no one can say that he didn't give his damndest to this performance.

Yeah, he's not quite as menacing as Hauer, but Bean is a dude who has a really unsung ability to vanish into every role he does.  From 006 to Boromir (I think? It's been a while since a former friend force-fed those movies on me something like 17,000 times), and that is some journey.  In this flick, Grace and Jim cross paths with his character in the middle of the night, in the pouring rain, and it's a decision that they will come to rue.  They eventually run into him a short while later at a gas station and pick him up, and this is where the real meat of the story begins, with the hitch-hiker (who introduces himself as John Ryder) takes the couple hostage and gives us the "I want to die" line that dotted all of the commercials for this flick in the lead-up to its release.

What ensues is admittedly a pretty out-there odyssey of death.  It really is the best descriptor that exists for how this story unfolds, as Grace and Jim repeatedly run away from Ryder, only for him to catch up with them and nonchalantly kill everyone that the protagonist characters are now surrounded by.  Hotel operators, police officers, the entire Swiss military, you name it, he can cut through everyone with ease.  Now, I'm pretty sure that the '80s original also doesn't explain Ryder's ninja skills, but this guy is overpowered to the nth degree.  As such, there really isn't a whole lot in the way of suspense here.  The guy is just invincible for 3/4 of the movie's running time until the script comes up with a few chance happenings that weaken him and allow somebody to catch him off-guard, but I'm getting ahead of myself.  There's also more blood than there was in the original movie, and a lot more LOUD NOISES.  That shouldn't surprise anyone either.

For an indication of what we're dealing with, there's this big long bit that kicks off Act Three that sums up pretty much the whole movie.  Grace and Jim have just escaped from Ryder again after he takes out a squadron of police cars and a helicopter BY HIMSELF.  Instead of calling the National Guard, they make their way to a hotel.  Within short order, Ryder shows up and puts a knife to Grace's throat, trying to rape her...and this 100-pound female is able to evade the dude who can kill 100 people with his pinky fingers.  This leads to Jim disappearing, and this ridiculous bit involving him tied up between the business ends of a tractor-trailer that's very reminiscent of that assisted suicide scene in the P. Dunesy version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  Meaning, unneeded grit and gore. 

So, you've probably gotten the impression that I didn't enjoy this movie.  And you would be right.  However, there are a couple things that it does pretty well.  First and foremost is the performance of Sean Bean.  While the script gives him almost 2008 Joker-esque powers of persuasion and the ability to know what every character is going to do at any given time, there's no doubt that Bean absolutely loved this role.  He hams it up in the best possible way, and whenever he's onscreen, it's +5 cool points just for his presence alone.  For what it's worth, Bush is also decent in her role although the script goes a bit too far with how much of a badass this woman walking around in a tiny skirt and go-go boots is by the end of the movie.  But call that personal taste. 

What didn't work?  Pretty much the rest.  I left out an entire subplot involving a police lieutenant doing a very Keystone Cops job in trying to tie all of the murders to Grace and Jim, slowly realizing that maybe...just maybe...it isn't these two J.C. Penney models committing all of the heinous acts.  That one-sentence wrap up will suffice for how interesting that plot thread is.  Knighton is also very forgettable as Jim.  Unlike Howell in the original, he pretty much screams "cannon fodder" from the get-go.  And while there are stakes in the movie due to how good Bean is in the Ryder role, there are none whenever it's Bush and Knighton onscreen together.  Spoiler alert: they're not terribly likable, but that's one of the tenants of Michael Bay and Platinum Dunes.  Why make good characters when you can make them bland?

Rating time.  Let's give The Hitcher version 2007 * 1/2 out of ****.  Again, not offensively bad, offensively mediocre.  And you'll forget it roughly .005 seconds after watching it.  Avoid.