It may also be about tractors, trains, helicopters, and fireballs, but it is primarily a movie for truck lovers. If your eyes light up at the thought of the swing weight of a loaded trailer, or the burn-out point for brakes on a downhill run, then you will love this movie. I am that kind of person, and that is why I found it perfectly easy to transcend an inherent aversion to action blockbusters and join Patrick Swayze as he runs a load of guns from Atlanta to New Jersey. The movie is wonderfully simpleminded. It commands us, by sheer force of noise, to join in the fun with an opening scene of a helicopter following a drive-off between two Mustangs and a dump truck.
Shipping crates fly through the air and break open to reveal contraband cargo.
They have a dead driver and the illegal cargo. What they don't have is the buyer or the seller. It will take some mighty heroics from Jack to overcome both a vigilant parole officer and the lack of a driver's license. Jack heads north in a spectacular rig accompanied by Randy Travis as Earl, a hostile passenger. Patrick Swayze is the truckers' John Wayne, cauterizing his own wound with gunpowder, driving with the hellbent cool and skill of a master driver.