The Hitcher is a 1986 thriller directed by Robert Harmon and starring Rutger Hauer, C. Thomas Howell and Jennifer Jason Leigh.
There is a clue to what this movie's all about in a scene at the very beginning where Jim Halsey (C. Thomas Howell) asks John Ryder (Rutger Hauer) "what do you want?" as Ryder holds a flick knife blade to his eye. Ryder replies "I want you to stop me."
Robert Harmon directed this thriller written by Eric Red (who penned the 2007 remake). It is simple and effective. Mark Isham's score is subdued and creepy, perfectly suited to the amazingly eerie Death Valley settings brilliantly shot by John Seale. Interestingly, Harmon made a film very similar to this (though nowhere near as effective) starring Jim Caviezel, Highwaymen, in 2002.
Jim is driving a Cadillac cross country USA. It's not his car, it's a 'driveaway', but that doesn't really matter. What matters is Jim doesn't have a great deal of common sense. It's rainy. It's dark. It's the middle of fucking nowhere, and he stops to pick up a hitchhiker.
Rutger Hauer enters the car with the cold air of barely contained menace. When, after some strange and eerie small talk, he casually tells Jim that he severed the extremities of a VW driver a couple miles back and he's going to do the same thing to Jim, you believe he is capable of doing just that.
After Jim manages to push him out of the vehicle, we see him slowly get to his feet against the slowly-rising sun. This is Ryder's game; getting picked up on desolate highways, killing whoever gave him a ride, then getting out and doing it all over again to the next unwitting driver.
But Jim ruins it. He pushes Ryder out before he can finish the job. So, Ryder comes up with a new game. And Jim is the unwilling player.
Ryder watches the car disappear along the highway. He's marked Jim. Jim is a dead man. Or at least that's what we're supposed to think. But Ryder doesn't want to kill. In fact, he gets a perfect opportunity to a few minutes later in the film. Yet he doesn't take it. Instead, he toys with him, and sets him up to take the fall for a few random killings. He's 'grooming' Jim, trying to force him to grow the balls to do what he must: stop Ryder.
The film stretches plausibility a number of times in the ensuing cat-and-mouse game Ryder and Jim play out against the backdrop of the lonely highways of outback USA. No-one is a match for Ryder - the highway patrol, the sheriff, the... um, other sheriff, his deputies, even a helicopter can't dent him. He brings it down with a couple well aimed rounds. He also manages to appear and disappear like a ghost, even through locked doorways and past fully conscious people. And this would all suck, if it wasn't for the great performances by the two leads.
Hauer is perfect as Ryder. His eyes have just the right amount of unhinged crazy. And I like the little touches - like Ryder wearing a wedding ring. It's such a subtle detail I didn't notice until watching the film again recently. I wondered if it was a trophy, or some detail of his past - some indication of a loss that drove him insane.
And C. Thomas Howell is great as the kid who got more than he bargained for. You really feel for him in a couple of scenes as Ryder thwarts all his attempts to contact the authorities and explain what's going on.
Jennifer Jason Leigh makes a brief appearance as Nash, the love interest who takes to Jim and tries to help him. I find it hilarious that she is very quick to abandon her normal life and become a felon. In one scene she's a small town diner waitress dreaming of 'one day' going to California. The next, she's hanging out of a car window shooting at cops.
Anyway, at it's core this is a two-man drama. It's this one-on-one aspect I really like about The Hitcher. Yes, we know how it's going to play out. But the fun is watching Ryder taunt, and Jim squirm. And then it's fun to see the tables turned. Though Ryder hardly squirms - he knows this is how it would go down.
The final scenes are haunting, mainly due to the sparse score and John Seale's fantastic photography. I like how Ryder seems to almost welcome death in the film's last moments. It's just the two of them, on a lonely stretch of highway. Jim has a shotgun levelled at him, but Ryder makes no move to get out of the way. We get the feeling this is just the way it had to be. By his own admission, Ryder is "tired." He wants this to be over. And in Jim, Ryder has found the perfect adversary. The only one who could ride this out with him to the grisly end. Ryder's orchestrated chaos has played out right down to this very moment. Game over.
Note: this is an updated version of a review I posted for The Hitcher on Best-Horror-Movies.com. The original can be seen here:
http://www.best-horror-movies.com/review?name=the-hitcher-1986-review
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