Blacktop (2000) / Thriller

MPAA Rated: R for violence and sexuality
Running Time: 100 min.

Cast: Meat Loaf, Kristin Davis, Lochlyn Munro, Victoria Pratt, Blu Mankuma
Director: T.J. Scott
Screenplay: T.J. Scott, Kevin Lund
Review published August 29, 2004

David (Munro, Scary Movie) plays a comedian who is performing at a truck stop diner, much to the displeasure of his girlfriend, Sylvia (Davis. "Sex and the City"), who thinks he's wasting his time at these dives.  When he consents with the owner to stay another week, Sylvia decides to ditch his sorry ass, tagging along with Jack (Meat Loaf, Formula 51), the trucker she has run into on a couple of occasions.  As they drive off, David begins to suspect that Sylvia isn't safe with her new friend, so he chases after them, only to find that someone has been leaving directions on where to go.  Is he losing his mind or is Jack playing dangerous games?

Blacktop is a substandard mad trucker movie, very derivative of many other, more popular genre pictures that came before it.  With some decent actors and a competent director at the helm, Blacktop has the ingredients for a halfway decent thriller, but it's sandbagged by a ludicrous script.  Writer-director T.J. Scott, a longtime television director for such shows as "Xena" and "La Femme Nikita", makes the mistake of making this a flimsy pathological experiment into terror that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever -- even taking into account the psychosis of the antagonist.

Meat Loaf does deliver a decent performance, but probably too serious for the kind of schlock movie this ends up being.  It starts off with some promise only to escalate downhill at a breakneck speed, especially when it gets to the mystifyingly obtuse ending.  This one's strictly for the biggest of Meat's fans, people who never tire of seeing Kristin Davis in a bra, and for lovers of no-brain late-night cable fare.  Mindless crap.

Qwipster's rating:

©2004 Vince Leo