Review: Big Driver

Maria Bello stars as a mystery novel author who attends a speaking engagement in Chicopee, Massachusetts. The friendly host of the event (Ann Dowd – never a trustworthy presence these days) suggests a quicker route home for Bello, even programming it into her GPS. When Bello has a blow-out in the middle of nowhere, she happens upon the title big, burly pick-up driver (Will Harris) who offers to help her. Instead he kidnaps her, rapes her, and eventually leaves her for dead. Bello is not dead however, and once she has her strength back she plots her revenge. Olympia Dukakis plays one of Bello’s fictional characters (!), and Joan Jett plays a sympathetic bar owner.

 

If this 2014 TV movie from director Mikael Salomon (who became a TV journeyman after the disappointing action-thriller “Hard Rain”) is any indication, author Stephen King has pretty much nothing new or interesting to say. Adapted by Richard Christian Matheson (the dreadful “Loose Cannons”, as well as “Happy Face Killer”) from King’s short story, this rather clichéd affair gets whatever mileage it has out of an absolutely terrific performance by the always underrated Maria Bello. She’s crucial here, believable as both victim and as a potentially strong woman able to fight back. A lot of actresses couldn’t sell that transition effectively. Outside of her this is a flat mixture of “Extremities” and Dean Koontz’s “Intensity”.

 

It’s too short and thin. It’s also rather silly, and after a rather harsh opening stanza, pretty standard TV movie stuff. How silly? Bello being left alive after the initial attack just doesn’t wash with me, even if he thought she was dead he should’ve done a better job of making sure. Meanwhile, that GPS voice is absurdly human and sophisticated. Yes, it’s likely a figment of her imagination, but still it’s almost science-fiction in what is otherwise a rape-revenge TV-movie. Singer Joan Jett (who seems to be a better actress than she was in 1987’s “Light of Day”) and the late Olympia Dukakis are especially wasted. It definitely needed more Ann Dowd in order for the whole thing to really work.

 

Maria Bello’s the whole show here, and it still boggles my mind that she’s not a bigger deal in Hollywood. She’s got everything necessary, and she’s terrific here. The film…is very much not terrific. I’m not sure rape-revenge is a genre suited to King, and I’m definitely sure it shouldn’t have been turned into a flimsy Lifetime TV movie.

 

Rating: C

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