With echoes of The Vanishing, this middle-of-nowhere action mystery does a good job most of the way.

Travelling cross-country to a new life, Kurt Russell and wife Kathleen Quinlan survive a hairy incident with a truck (and a confrontation with its driver) only for their car to break down.

She hitches a ride with a passing trucker (JT Walsh) to call for help at the nearest café, but when Russell mends the car (which seems to have been tampered with) and arrives there, no one has seen his wife.

Russell's problem is that the kidnappers have assumed from the new car he's driving that he's worth a mint, when in fact he's almost broke.

If the plot has holes, and director Jonathan Mostow misses one or two tricks, the story still surges irresistibly forward as its hero becomes increasingly desperate.

Russell gives it his all (although stuntwork is sometimes too obvious) and Walsh is impassively evil. Quinlan is excellent in the smallish role of the wife.