Road Rage (1999) Yasmine Bleeth, Jere Burns, Alana Austin, Jenica Bergere Movie Review

Road Rage (1999)   3/53/53/53/53/5


Yasmine Bleeth in Road Rage (1999)

Bleeth's Psycho Burns

Having recently lost his wife and child in a car crash Eddie Madden (Jere Burns) is having problems with work as a delivery driver and already has his bosses on his case. Then one day he is driving on a congested road when a woman busy on her cell phone to be driving with care and attention cuts him up and leads to Eddie driving aggressively as he followed her. That woman was Ellen Carson (Yasmine Bleeth) and it leads to Eddie losing his job when she makes a complaint. With an old friend in the office giving Eddie Ellen's details he starts to stage a campaign of terror against her and her family.

So here we have a young woman being targeted by a psycho who not only tries to run her off the road but he sneaks in her house, knows where she is going to be and basically stages a campaign of terror including manipulating the police and wheedling his way into her step-daughter's life. So obviously we should be sympathising with the woman, in the case of the TV movie "Road Rage" that would be Ellen played by Yasmine Bleeth except there is something about Ellen or Bleeth which makes it hard to sympathise with her. There is something about the way Bleeth stares and the attitude which she gives Ellen which doesn't work and stops us caring about her.

Jere Burns in Road Rage (1999)

But that doesn't mean that "Road Rage" is one of those perverse movies where we sympathise with the wrong person as despite feeling sorry for the character of Eddie due to the loss of his family the level of revenge he goes to is frankly unbelievable. It means that whilst Jere Burns is highly effective at playing Eddie in a sinister manner with some creepy tendencies the fact it ends up going over board in trying to be unsettling actually ruins what could have been an effective yet simple thriller. And that is actually one of the movie's problems as it gets into things so quickly that the simplicity of it means at times it drags things out and repeats itself too much.

What this all boils down to is that "Road Rage" is a flawed movie with a simple storyline which feels drawn out and some performances which give the characters the wrong sort of vibe. But if you enjoy TV movies the chances are the simplicity of the movie will appeal because it certainly won't tax your mind with complexity.


LATEST REVIEWS