Highwaymen - movie on DVD

This film is out on DVD now, didn't do much at the theatre, thanks to Newline's weak, weak promotion.

The film is decent. A stripped down thriller with some inventive car scenes in it. Jesus (er, Jim Caviezel) gives a good performance, in some scenes he looks like Ralph Fiennes! The basic plot is a fellow's wife (Jim) is murdered by a psycho insurance salesman who runs her down in his '72 cadillac Eldorado. Caviezel flips, and drives his car at top speed into the Caddy. The insurance nutcase is massively wounded and ends up a being a mechanical man hooked into his car, which he uses, state to state to commit more vehicular homicides. Caviezel spends his time looking for him. Caviezel hooks up with a girl whose friend was a victim of the killer. She unwillingly helps Caviezel in his hunt for the killer. A secondary character is a state accident investigator who follows along to figure out what is actually happening.

One of the stars of the movie is Caviezel's limited ed. 1968 Hemi Barracuda drag racing car. They made a few of these lightweight cars equipped with Chrysler 426 Hemis for drag racing in the 1960s. Now, in real life this car, even in rough shape would net the owner about $150,000 as the price of Mopar muscle cars are going through the roof, and sadly, they do partially trash the car in this movie, like usual for Hollywood. The interesting thing is that I'd lay odds (even though you don't see the engine) that it actually has a Hemi in it. The exhaust note (provided they didn't dub it) is a Hemi exhaust note, very particular sound compared to most other engines of the era. However, given the value of actual cars like this, it's likely they "cloned" one using a conventional Barracuda.

But the movie is entertaining, with two particular car stunts unique in my experience.

Two flubs to look for by slo-mo'ing your DVD: The Barracuda loses a wheel and then "regains" it. Caviezel's wife is clearly a dummy when seen from the Caddy driver's perspective as she's hit by the car.

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Richard
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