Very overlooked
Everyone I know who was watched this loves it
but its so overlooked mainstream wise
1997 was a fun year for movies. Breakdown just got lost in the fray.
shareI think this is totally accurate. The mid-to-late 90s was sort of a mini "golden age" for movies. A lot of great films came out at a time when the internet and subsequent internet "critics" took hold. Breakdown was a movie that was solid, with a great cast and premise that just got lost. I mean 1997 - L.A. Confidential, Good Will Hunting and the behemoth Titanic. It was a great year for action movies, comedies and dramas. It's good that this film is appreciated nowadays.
shareI had an odd childhood (thanks to an odder grandmother), and didn't get to see any movies in theater from I'm going to guess 1985 through 1995. Ages 5 to 13. I finally got to start seeing movies in theater after my life circumstances changed, and even though I remained a fairly poor kid in my teens, I went to see tons of movies, probably in no small part BECAUSE I didn't get to see any growing up.
But I can confirm, the late 90s were in fact a high period for movies. To be fair, the early to mid 90s, and hell, pretty much all of the 80s, were ALSO a very high period for movies. In 1998 I think I legit saw around 40 or so movies in theater. And of course not all of them were gems, but the fact that there were so many that I actually WANTED to see. Even if you subtract a couple I likely got dragged to by someone else, that's still a lot of movies. Between 1996 and 1999, I think it's probably fair to estimate that I probably saw somewhere in the neighborhood of at least around 120 movies in theater. Might be wrong, but it was a lot.
Hell, even in the early to mid 2000s, there were still lots of movies that I actually wanted to see in theater. It wasn't until the late 2000s, specifically 2009, and certain into the 2010s, that there was a sharp drop-off. In the past decade, I'd say I'm lucky if, on average, there are even 5 films I want to see in theaters anymore. The overall quality of Hollywood's output has just dropped off a cliff.
But I digress. The point was that I definitely saw a lot of movies in 1997 too, and this film was sadly nowhere on my radar back then. Didn't really know about it. In fact I JUST now (like within the past hour) got done watching it for the first time, and I did mostly enjoy it. It was stressful (which a good suspense/thriller should be), but it had a decent ending, and was very well done.