“Breakdown” – A gripping yarn from start to finish, director Jonathan Mostow’s “Breakdown” stars Kurt Russell as an ordinary guy on vacation out West when his wife (Kathleen Quinlan) is kidnapped and his world is turned upside-down. Russell’s responses to the slowly unravelling situation are fascinating and the viewer has no problem pulling for him because the situation seems so nightmarishly plausible. Everyone is out to get him, mainly the detestable head kidnapper (J.T. Walsh). Plenty of twists are thrown into the revenge formula en route to a deliciously violent ending.
– John Hansen, “Best of the action genre,” NDSU Spectrum, May 2000