THE HITCHER

Jim and Grace are a couple of college students traveling through New Mexico to spend a few days of vacation at her home. As soon as they leave, they meet John Ryder, a hitchhiker whose car has broken down in the rain, asking them for a ride to the nearest motel. After an initial hesitation, Jim accepts: big mistake! John Ryder is a ruthless psychopath who asks drivers for rides before killing them. Originally there was «The Hitcher – The Long Road of Fear», an effective action thriller that director Robert Harmon directed in 1986 based on a screenplay by Eric Red. In 2003, Universal put a faded sequel («The Hitcher II – I Was Waiting for You») into production, destined only for the home video circuit, in which the protagonist of the first film found himself incredulously face to face with the killer hitchhiker again. But in 2007, someone decided it was time to dust off John Ryder's trench coat; that someone is the famous production company Platinum Dunes, the company that churns out remakes owned by Michael Bay, Brad Fuller, and Andrew Form. And as has already happened with the new versions of «Don't Open That Door» and «Amityville Horror», the remake of «The Hitcher» is not at all despicable. The working method of Platinum Dunes is now well known: making remakes that follow the subject of the original film while completely rewriting the screenplay. This choice allows the final work to live its own life, despite having the title of an already existing work. Therefore, the new «The Hitcher» has the idea that is at the base of the 1986 film and retracing its fundamental steps to unfold further on its own tracks. We no longer have a single protagonist/victim, but two (an idea already present in the 2003 sequel); the «hard» of the story is not the man but the woman; it is not the action that predominates over the story but the tension of the thriller; violence is not suggested but exhibited. Well, we can say that these are the main differences between the two films. It must then be added that the biggest flaw of Harmon's film was a somewhat patchy screenplay full of improbable situations, a flaw that fortunately has been corrected in the 2007 version. Well, improbable situations are still there, but the new screenplay signed by Jake Wade Wall, Eric Bernt, and the «owner» Eric Red turns out to be more compact and purged of those passages of forced suspension of disbelief. What works a bit less in «The Hitcher» 2007 is the character of John Ryder, a Sean Bean («Silent Hill», «The Dark») as usual good, but definitely inferior to John Ryder of Rutger Hauer. The coldness and madness of the actor of the first film is not equal to that of the last one, so much so that Sean Bean appears to us as a more subdued psychopath, fierce but tired in his actions. Probably it is a wanted characterization, a killer almost incapable of controlling his own actions, a sort of schizophrenic divided between two personalities: on the one hand a fugitive who wants to be stopped, but on the other hand an animal that enjoys causing pain and finding himself in situations of extreme danger. A different characterization, but less effective. In this remake, moreover, we find ourselves facing a greater dose of violence: blood, slit throats, and pieces of brain are plentiful, and even the famous scene of the «pull» between the two trucks this time leaves nothing to the imagination. The multi-award-winning music video director Dave Meyers is here making his debut with a feature film and demonstrates that he handles the mechanisms of the thriller well. Fortunately, Meyers does not transport the language of the music video into the film (although a couple of «intrusive» pop songs could have been avoided), recently too exploited in horror cinema, and directs in a sober and professional manner respecting the tense rules of the genre and giving the film a good rhythm that does not depend only on the editing, but above all on the way in which the story is narrated through images. A special mention also goes to the photography of James Hawkinson, who, in tune with the products of Platinum Dunes, manages to express the sense of oppression and danger perfectly thanks to the dosage of hyper-realistic colors that tend to warm and dusty tones. The cast of «The Hitcher», in addition to the already mentioned Bean, includes decent but not too memorable actors such as Zachary Knighton («Cherry Falls – The Country of Evil») in the role of Jim, the remarkable Sophia Bush («Stay Alive»; «My Boyfriend Is a Bastard») in the role of Grace, and the character actor Neal McDonough («Minority Report»; «The Insatiable») in the role of the tough sheriff Esteridge. In short, «The Hitcher» offers a little more than an hour and twenty minutes of good entertainment, some jumps from the chair, and a lot of adrenaline. An operation that does not pretend much and keeps its promises.