Plot

A man searches for his missing wife after his car breaks down in the middle of the desert.

Jeff and Amy Taylor are moving to California and must drive across the country. When they find themselves stranded in the middle of a desert with hardly anyone or anything around, their trip comes to a sudden halt. Amy had taken a ride with a friendly trucker to a small diner to call for help, but after a long time, Jeff becomes worried. He finds that no one in the diner has seen or heard from his wife. When he finds the trucker who gave Amy the ride, the trucker swears he has never seen her. Now Jeff must attempt to find his wife, who has been kidnapped and is being held for ransom. But who can he trust?—Anonymous

A couple narrowly escapes colliding with a truck while driving thru cross country. The truck driver shows hostility but the couple move on after apologizing. Unfortunately their jeep breaks down on a vacant road. The wife accepts a ride from a passing truck to get to a nearby diner and call for help while the husband stays near their car. The husband is surprised to find that the battery connections were tampered and aft rectifying the connections he drives to the diner, only to get a shock that no one has seen his wife. He sets on the road thinking that his wife must have gone to the nearby town but aft seeing the trucker on the road, he forces the trucker to stop. The trucker claims he has never seen the couple and after searching the truck along with a sheriff, the trucker is allowed to go. The sheriff advises the husband to report a missing person's complain in the nearby station telling the husband that maybe his wife must have left him.—Fella_shibby@yahoo.com

A man and his wife are driving cross-country from Mass. to San Diego when their new car mysteriously breaks down. A truck driver stops and assists them by taking his wife to the nearest diner to phone for help but in reality is kidnapping her, causing her husband to track down his wife and the kidnapper himself.—Amit P. <penny@ncentral.com>

After their new Jeep conks out on a desolate stretch of Arizona highway, a well-heeled Massachusetts couple accepts the help of a kindly, honest-seeming trucker, who drives the wife to a diner while the husband stays behind to "protect" the vehicle. After saying goodbye, the husband gets two surprises: the Jeep starts, and his wife never actually arrived at the diner, and the trucker doesn't recollect having picked her up at all...—Ary Luiz Dalazen Jr. <ajr@fortalnet.com.br>

Married couple Jeff and Amy Taylor (Kurt Russell and Kathleen Quinlan) are driving across the country from Boston to California for a vacation. While driving through somewhere in rural New Mexico, they almost collide with another truck on the road. Jeff is later confronted by its driver, a hostile redneck cowboy named Earl (M.C. Gainey), at a gas station. Though the near-collision was the other driver's fault, he still insults Jeff for being ignorant. Jeff waits until Amy comes back and they leave.

A short time later, their car breaks down in the middle of the desert. Amy accepts a ride with a friendly passing trucker named "Red" Barr (J.T. Walsh) to a small diner about five miles down the road to call for help, while Jeff stays with the car. Jeff discovers disconnected wires to be the problem with the car and drives to the diner, but no one there has seen his wife. While driving to the nearest police station, Jeff spots Barr's truck and runs him off the road. The trucker swears that he has never seen Jeff or his wife before. Jeff hails a passing sheriff, but a brief search of Barr's truck is fruitless for Amy is nowhere to be found. Jeff tries to tell the sheriff (Rex Linn) that the trucker is lying about not remembering him or Amy, but the sheriff tells Jeff that he should drive to his station about 20 miles down the road and file a missing person's report.

Jeff drives to a local police station where he talks with the deputy (Kim Robillard), about his wife's disappearance. The Deputy advises Jeff to go back to the diner and wait for his wife. Jeff does so, but he cannot get any cooperation or help from the diner owner or any of the patrons. When Jeff insists on looking at the receipts in the last few hours, the diner owner threatens him with a rifle, forcing Jeff to leave.

Outside the diner, Jeff is asking all persons coming and leaving if they have seen his wife, which none of them respond that they have. Jeff ends up meeting Billy (Jack Noseworthy), a local simpleton and mechanic, who says that he saw his wife arrive with Red and leave in another truck driven by a cowboy. Billy then tells Jeff where they have taken her, but tells him not to go the police because they may be involved.

Following the directions that Billy gave him, Jeff drives down a rural back road, running into a gate at a construction site. While he tries to figure out his next move, he's ambushed by Earl. After a short chase, Jeff escapes by driving his Jeep into a river. He exits the sinking car and floats down the river, later circling back around to where his attackers are salvaging it from the water. He is found and knocked out by Billy.

Jeff awakes in the trunk of a car. Billy (who drops his simpleton routine) opens it and asks how much money Jeff has, which is then demanded in exchange for his wife, who is being held hostage. The two rednecks, Billy and Earl, remove Jeff from the trunk and bring him to their ringleader standing nearby... who happens to be Red Barr. Barr demands that Jeff withdraw a large sum of cash, $90,000, from a local bank in the nearby small town of Brackett, in exchange for Amy. Barr gravely warns Jeff that they'll be watching him closely. If Jeff doesn't comply fully or notifies the police, Barr promises to kill and mutilate Amy.

Jeff heads into the local bank to withdraw the money. Knowing he has only a fraction of the assumed amount (a little more then $5,000), Jeff attempts to alert the bank manager to his plight. However, paranoid that Red's group is keeping an eye on him when a stranger enters the bank and begins watching him, Jeff abandons the idea. After thinking about sneaking out a back window in the men's room, Jeff instead returns to the lobby of the bank. While the bank manager is busy with the transaction, Jeff and steals marked money ribbons and a letter opener knife from the manager's desk. He uses the money ribbons to pack stacks of $1 bills between two $100 bills. After leaving the bank with the money, Jeff is contacted by Barr from a payphone to leave the town by walking, where he is picked up by Earl.

While gloating about how easy Jeff and his wife were to trick and implying that they intend to kill them anyway, Earl discovers that Jeff has stacked the bundles, using the money ribbons he took from the bank manager's desk. Jeff then stabs Earl with the letter opener that he stole and used to cut through the duct tape he was bound with, then forcing him from the driver's seat and duct taping his hands to his legs and his neck to the head rest. Jeff tortures Earl for a few minutes, using the truck's brakes to choke him into revealing where they took Amy. Just then, the same sheriff from the beginning of the film, seeing the truck being driven erratically, pursues and attempts to arrest both Earl and Jeff. Jeff surrenders when ordered and throws away Earl's pistol. Earl frees himself and shoots the sheriff with a pistol concealed in his boot. Just as Earl is about to shoot Jeff, the wounded sheriff shoots and kills Earl. Jeff uses the Sheriff's radio to call for an ambulance and leaves behind the wounded sheriff to find his wife.

Although initially unsuccessful at finding Billy or his wife at the truck stop Earl mentioned, Jeff spots Red Barr, who is preoccupied with a telephone call to an accomplice. Seeing two State Troopers searching for a suspect in the shooting of the sheriff, Jeff manages to jump onto Barr's moving truck at it pulls out of the truck stop. Starting in the spare tire rack on the trailer, he inches his way to the tractor and is able to hide in the spoiler on top of the cab.

After driving all night, Red Barr arrives at his family's farm where he greets his wife and teenage son, whom they address as 'Warren'. Jeff hides in their barn and watches as Red, Billy, and a fourth accomplice, a tow truck driver named Al, take Amy from a compartment underneath a moving van that they've also stashed Jeff's Jeep in. They lock her in a freezer in the basement under the barn and return to the house. Jeff also discovers that Red and his accomplices have apparently been preying upon unsuspecting travelers and truckers for some time now by stealing their money, luggage and cargo and killing them afterward.

Unsuccessful at prying the lock open on the trap door, Jeff finds a pistol in the moving van and enters the house and demands the basement keys from Red. Red's son, Deke, appears with a rifle and threatens Jeff, but accidentally shoots Al in the arm after Jeff knocks the gun from his hands. However, Billy flees by jumping out a window while Jeff forces Red to return to the barn. Red's wife, Arlene, opens the barn basement, and frees Amy from the freezer, surprised at seeing the hidden bunker and Amy locked in the freezer. Jeff locks everyone in the basement, then he and Amy find a pickup truck at a nearby abandoned trailer home. They manage to drive off just as Billy manages to free everyone, just escaping as the freed Red drives through the trailer home with his tractor-trailer.

As dawn begins to break, a climatic and harrowing car chase begins as Billy, Al, and Red pursue Jeff and Amy on the highway; the former in cars and the latter in his truck. During the pursuit, Billy is killed when his car explodes after Jeff forces his car off the road. The trailer from Red's truck detaches, causing Al to violently crash into it, apparently killing him also. Undeterred, Red attempts to force Jeff and Amy's vehicle off a bridge, trapping Amy's leg underneath the dashboard. Jeff rushes out of the vehicle and into Red's big rig, where a struggle over the steering wheel forces Red's truck over the edge, leaving it dangling on a steel bridge support. Jeff fights Red on the suspended big rig. While Jeff hangs from the truck, Red tries to whip him off with a chain but Jeff grabs it and Red looses his balance falls off the truck and to the rocks below. Jeff frees Amy and the two look down at the seemingly-dead Red, who then starts to move. Amy (clearly shaken and teeming with rage from her captivity) then pulls the automatic shifter on their pickup truck which has been holding Red's truck in place and it falls and crushes him. Relieved that their nightmare is over, the final shot shows Jeff and Amy sitting in the middle of the bridge, recovering from the ordeal.